


Beginning Again

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Action, Novel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-07
Updated: 2009-08-02
Packaged: 2019-01-19 18:50:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12415902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: AU: With Sirius dead, Ron and Hermione distancing themselves, and Dumbledore unwilling to train him in what he wants to know, Harry must train himself and discover his power. And what will Draco do with this darker more Slytherin Harry? no slash sorry lol





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

Disclaimer: I do not and am not trying to own any of the works or ideas of J.K. Rowling. She is the sole owner of that material.

AN:

I just began writing this story several weeks ago and a good friend of mine suggested I post it over here. So here we go.

This is my first fanfiction :) I'm writing this because I love Harry Potter Fanfiction and also so I can work on my writing before I start college at the end of the summer. So, feel free to critique and review as much as you want; I would appreciate it. I'm going to try and write a couple of chapters a week. So without further ado, here is the first chapter.

 

Chapter 1

Harry sat quietly in the corner of the library staring at a dusty tome he had picked from the shelf behind him. His eyes, staring blankly at the text, fell from line to line, his hand reaching out and turning the page. To the casual observer, it looked like he was reading. He was trying to, but his mind could not focus.

It had been a couple days since Sirius had fallen through the veil. “It’s my fault,” Harry thought. He turned another page, slowly tracing the lines with his eyes.

“I’m so sorry Sirius,” he whispered as a tear fell to the page.

He watched the tear hit the page and slowly soak in, smearing a letter of the handwritten text. As Harry looked at the smudged letter, he noticed the sentence it blurred and started reading.

_“What one must understand about magic is that there is no such thing as good and evil. Magic is sentient to a certain extent, but not enough to split itself by defining aspects of its nature with moral ambiguity. The ‘darker’ magics are considered evil due to their effect on the castor and the person affected. Apart from the sometimes detrimental aspects of darker magic, it -- by nature of being more powerful -- is exceedingly more difficult to control. The result is either untalented warlocks throwing about massive amounts of uncontrolled magic that has been defined by the castor to cause destruction of some nature, or it results in extremely talented wizards and witches using some of the most powerful spells ever developed. Neither of these options were appealing to the Ministry of Magic and so in 1543 they established…”_

He sat there. He felt he should feel some strong emotion but his body was simply too tired and drained for him to feel anything other than mild curiosity. He flipped to the first page of his book, Magics by Arthur Sarcosta.

Harry stared at the book, trying to remember what shelf he had grabbed it from. He turned the pages to the end of the chapter he was reading.

_“There is no such thing as good and evil when it comes to magic. There is only power and the minds that use it.”_

His mind travelled back to his first year. “There is no good and evil, only power, and those to weak to seek it,” he muttered to himself. He couldn’t quite bring himself to believe the statement, not because it came from the Dark Lord but… well, to be honest, he didn’t know why. Everything about the way he had been taught since he came to Hogwarts was the opposite. There were strictly defined lines of good and evil, and what was useful and what wasn’t. It didn’t surprise Harry at all that the Ministry restricted knowledge and labeled it as evil because they were nervous about people using it to cause problems.

Harry might have been disgusted or upset with the world he lived in a week or two ago, but again he was simply too tired to feel anything more than mild interest in the situation. “I could get used to this,” he thought. “It’s so much easier to think about everything when I’m too tired to feel anything.”

He grabbed the book and performed an obscuring charm he had found when he was looking for something to teach the DA. Instead of removing the wards or charms already on the object, the charm blocked their presence off from the rest of the world, the people the wards would alert. In short, it meant that he could put the book in his bag and walk out without having to check it out with Madame Pince and without worrying about any anti-theft charms going off.

Walking out of the library, he briefly wondered why there weren’t protections against the charm he had just performed. It was a simple enough charm, which could bypass just about any basic anti-theft ward and some of the more complicated ones. As he made his way to Gryffindor tower, his mind wandered and he zoned out.

* * *

“Courage,” Harry said, rolling his eyes slightly at the simple password as he stepped through the portrait hole. He looked around and didn’t see anyone he knew very well. Ron and Hermione were still at St. Mungo’s recovering from their injuries, so he walked up the stairs to his dormitory, dropped his bag and collapsed onto the bed. He lay there for several minutes before taking his wand out to cast a silencing spell and a privacy ward. He lay back down, hesitating only for a moment before spending the next thirty minutes clearing his mind.

* * *

Draco Malfoy sat in the opposite corner of the library finishing an extra potions project that he was doing for Professor Snape. He set his quill down and looked over his essay. He sighed. It still needed work and he prepared himself for another hour of writing. He put his hand to his neck and tried massaging the kinks out of it, then pulled his hand away thinking of the reprimand he would receive from his father if he saw him giving in to this habit in a public area. He sighed again and then winced as he thought about even more reprimands against sighing.

He glanced up and looked around the library. Potter. He was sitting across from him. Draco leaned back in his chair and regarded him. Now here was an enigma. Everything about Potter confused him. The Boy-who-Lived, champion of the wizarding world… Draco always assumed Potter would own every part of those titles. Using his fame to get away with all kinds of things, using it to make the school worship him in all his arrogant glory. But he didn’t.

When Potter first arrived at school, he looked starved… for food or love or both, Draco couldn’t tell. He looked at everyone with those bright, shining, green eyes, searching for something. Again, he wasn’t sure for what, affection maybe. But that had changed over the years. Each year Potter became more and more private. Ever since the end of last year, when he appeared with the Hufflepuff’s body, he had changed even more. To be honest, though he would never admit it, Draco was a little scared of Potter. “Well, scared isn’t quite the right word,” Draco thought as he reflected. Nervous was a better description.

No, Potter had changed a lot. He reminded Draco of his father’s friends. It was the way he walked, the way he looked wary, wild and dangerous. Just like his father’s friends, the sense of wariness seemed to be a part of who they were, as though they expected to be attacked at every corner but were too prepared and confident to look anything more than dangerous. Potter stood up, grabbed his book and cast a charm that made Draco’s eyes open in surprise, though not so wide that anyone else would notice.

“Well, well, Potter. Casting dark charms so you can steal a library book,” he thought. “And he did it wordlessly which adds a level of difficulty beyond the fact that that charm is no simple feat.” He then tried to forget what he’d just thought. It just added another layer to Potter that, as he had observed more and more, he didn’t entirely want to know about. But his own curiosity, and the thought of a reward from the Dark Lord for providing interesting information, made him sit back and continue his thinking. His essay sat untouched in front of him until curfew when he made his way back to the dungeons.

* * *

When Harry awoke the next morning, he was startled to find that actually it was morning. Not only that, but he wasn’t sweating. He couldn’t feel the spells placed around his bed straining against his magic, and his throat wasn’t raw from screaming. He made an instant decision that he would put all of his focus into learning oclumency. Clearing his mind was the only explanation for not having his usual nightmares as well as the ones that the Dark Lord continuously gifted him.

Trying not to wake his roommates, he quietly walked into the bathrooms and showered quickly. As he stepped out, he looked at his body in the mirror. His first thought was that he didn’t look as skinny as he used to. He had been running in the mornings ever since the Room of Requirement had given him a book that explained a link between physical strength and magical strength. He continued his examination, counting all the scars on his body. A variety on his back and upper legs were from Uncle Vernon.

The basilisk scar was particularly nasty. He always made sure to keep it covered because it emitted a kind of aura that could put the viewer in a trance. He had tested that after he caught Neville staring at it when he looked up from reading in bed. After he had shaken Neville out of his trance, Neville had vomited and continued vomiting throughout the night. Neville didn’t guess that it had anything to do with the scar and just assumed it was something he ate. But it drove Harry to test the scar for lingering magic. He had spent days searching for a spell which would show the magic in an area. When he finally found and used the spell it definitely showed the latent magic in the scar; it resembled his lightning bolt curse scar in that it was surrounded by dark magic. The difference was that the magic in his curse scar appeared to be swirling and pouring from it, whereas the basilisk scar was surrounded by a latent field of dark magic. “Of course,” Harry thought, “it isn’t really dark magic, is it? Just magic used with intent to do evil.”

He continued surveying his scars. As Harry looked at each of them, he remembered how and why he got them. It reminded him of how much he and others had given up over the years as well as much they had achieved.

He pulled his clothes on after toweling off and was about to go grab his bag from his room when he remembered that classes had ended. Instead of grabbing his bag, he opened it and grabbed the book he had taken the night before and headed for breakfast.  
He was in a pretty good mood considering everything going on right now. He hadn’t had any nightmares and he’d miraculously made progress in oclumency. So far, it was a good day. As he made his way into the Great Hall, the empty seats where Ron and Hermione usually sat dampened his mood.

He walked to the furthest end of the Griffindor table and sat down. Grabbing a couple pieces of toast, he pulled his book out and turned to a chapter titled “Runes”.

_“Runes and rituals are the origins of the modern day method of focusing magic that was developed by the Romans during the height of their empire. Though the word ‘origins’ implies a level of simplicity, runes and rituals are far from simple so they evolved into the simpler method of using wands and words as foci. Rituals were, and still are, incredibly complicated methods of invoking magic. Runes on the other hand have gotten much simpler with the discovery of wand-making. Much information on runes has been lost and classes taught on the subject lean toward learning the runic language rather than using it for its actual purpose — magic. The method is quite basic in theory. Draw the rune with your wand while focusing on the image of the rune, then push your magic into the rune to power it. This idea is simple enough, but…”_

Harry stopped reading the book. “Just draw the rune and push power into it. Huh. Sounds pretty easy to me.” He glanced around and noticed a fourth-year sitting at the Ravenclaw table reading a runes textbook. Harry was about to get up and ask if he could borrow it when two things occurred to him that made him sit back down.

Draco looked up from his table and saw Harry lean back with a scheming look on his face.  
‘I can’t just ask the girl for her book, apart from the fact that I don’t even know what would I do when I got it,” Harry realized. “Would I look at the rune and try and remember it till I have time to draw it out? Or do something right here? Either way, I’d be calling huge amounts of attention to myself.” He paused in thought. “‘Dammit! I am a wizard. I have the power He knows not. There is only power, those who use it and those too weak to seek it.’  
Harry pulled one of the large wooden bowls of fruit toward him and wordlessly banished all the fruit from it and transfigured the bowl into a small empty journal. Harry was kind of impressed with himself. He’d never performed magic in this way. The most he’d ever used magic outside of class was for the DA or when he was being attacked. He’d only just started researching things for his own use this past year.

Frowning slightly, he cast another spell, though he wasn’t sure it would accomplish what he wanted and there was no way he would be able to tell if it had worked until he’d cast his next spell. He tried to make the journal able to accommodate all the pages in the girl’s textbook without actually having to make more physical pages. He used the space-modifying spell that allowed trunks and rooms to have more space than what was physically possible. When he performed it, he focused on the idea of what it should do to the book. He thought it should work since the spell itself was a charm that was rooted heavily in transfiguration theory, based on willing an object to change, or at least he guessed it was, due to the spell’s effect. So, he simply willed the spell on the book to do what he wanted it to.

He began to have doubts about his spell work. What he had just done went against everything he had been taught, but he had this nagging feeling that it would work. He cast a quick anchoring spell on his empty journal so that his copying spell would have somewhere to copy to.

He leaned forward a little, grabbed his fork with left hand and started eating as he moved his right hand and wand under the table to aim at the girl’s book. “Ha!,” he thought. “I got something from the Dursleys after all, whether they wanted me to or not.” The various injuries that had been caused by ‘his family’, as Dumbledore called them, had at times left him unable to use one hand or the other. He had been forced to learn how to use both growing up, partly preemptively and partly because there were times he just couldn’t use his dominant right hand.

Smirking, he shot the copying spell at the girl’s book. Then, placing his wand back into the holster on his right wrist, he continued eating. He tried not to look at his journal. He looked up again and scanned the Great Hall. His eyes drifted across the Slytherin table. Draco was sitting amongst a group of older years eating calmly. There weren’t many students down this early. He was beginning to think he was too paranoid when Draco glanced up and made eye contact with him.

Harry jumped a little in his seat. Malfoy sneered at him and looked away laughing at a joke the boy on the right of him had said. Harry sat there wondering what his problem was. He picked up the transfigured book and stacked it underneath the one he had taken from the library. He calmly walked out of the Great Hall heading towards the seventh floor corridor.

***

Review... pretty please :)  
epic


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not and am not trying to own any of the works or ideas of J.K. Rowling. She is the sole owner of that material.

Chapter 2:

 

Hermione lay thinking in her bed at St. Mungo’s. Well, that’s all she’d been doing really. Sleeping, eating and thinking, interspersed with occasional tests to make sure the curse wouldn’t make a recurrence while the treatments were trying to drive it from her system.

Hermione had been thinking a lot. There was a war starting, one in which she could be a central figure and not only because of her status as a smart muggleborn witch, but because she was best friends with Harry Potter. He was the real center of this war even though she didn’t yet fully understand why. She had a pretty good idea it had something to do with the prophecy, the one that caused the situation that landed her in this bed. To be honest, she didn’t really want to be a part of this war. She loved Harry, she really did. But was it enough to sacrifice her happiness and safety? What about her family? If she stood with Harry, they would be dragged into the war and likely be tortured and killed.

She hadn’t told Harry or Ron, but she was looking at muggle universities and was thinking about doing independent-study for her last year of Hogwarts. She told herself that she hadn’t made up her mind yet, but she already had. She would be there for Harry emotionally as long as she could, but she wouldn’t… she couldn’t… involve herself in this war.

She hated herself for her decision, but she just didn’t have Ron’s emotional attachment to the wizarding world and she didn’t have Harry’s obsessive hatred for everything to do with Voldemort. She didn’t have a stake in this battle. Her world was the muggle world.

It had been a wonderful experience finding and learning about her magic, but that was all the wizarding world could offer her. It wasn’t something she would give her life for. It was a bigoted community. Even if she was one hundred-percent committed to it, she would probably never be as successful as she wanted to be simply because of her status as a muggleborn. She would be constantly fighting against the stereotypes. Of course, this was all dependent on the idea that Voldemort wouldn’t win.

Yes, this was the right decision. She just hoped it wouldn’t hurt Harry too much.

* * *

At the same time, Ron was also thinking. It wasn’t something he was really used to. He generally followed Harry and Hermione and just took cues from them, but he had changed more than anyone would realize for some time to come. Two Unspeakable agents from the Department of Mysteries had come to him several nights earlier. They had asked him swear an oath of secrecy about their visit and what they were about to tell him, that the Brain had caused an odd side effect that was just starting to show.

The previous owner of the Brain had been a muggle man who lived in 16th century France during the Wars of Religion. He didn’t fight in the conflict, but he witnessed its effect on his country. He was not in the upper class, but was just influential enough to avoid being forced into anything he didn’t want to be a part of. His name was Jean-Paul Malfois.

All they told him about the man was his name and Ron laughed when he heard it. Out of all the people the Brain could have belonged to, it would be one of Malfoy’s ancestors. The other information Ron had already figured out from searching his new memories, those that the Brain had left with him.

He didn’t have every single memory that Malfois had. As the Unspeakables had explained, when memories get older they have less and less resemblance to the factual and historical events. They squish together into a jumble of feelings and images associated with the person’s life. Ron had feelings from the man’s childhood and he could tell that it wasn’t a pleasant one.

He felt that he finally understood, at least slightly, what Harry had gone through in his life and, all of a sudden, he was able to sympathize with Harry in a way. He hadn’t ever experienced this kind of mental trauma.

Malfois’s memories themselves weren’t too much of a problem. The problem was that the instincts and feelings of a man who lived in the 16th century were fighting with Ron’s own instincts and feelings.

The Unspeakables told him there were two paths he could go down. He could learn Occlumency so he could separate his memories and feelings from those of Jean-Paul Malfois and bury them deep within his subconscious. Or he could integrate them into his own and become a mix of himself and Jean-Paul.

Ron considered the two choices. In the few days he had been aware of these memories, he had come to know Jean-Paul and begun the process of integrating this second personality into his own. He didn’t think he could stand the idea of boxing this new part of him away.

“Well, that settles it then,” he thought.

* * *

When Professor McGonagall arrived at St. Mungos to pick up Hermione and Ron, they had just entered the lobby from their separate wings, each escorted by a nurse. Their greeting shocked Professor McGonagall. She had expected rather raucous hellos when they saw each other, but their reaction was neither excitement nor happiness that they were both safe and together again. For heavens’ sakes, they had fought standing next to each other and nothing creates a stronger bond than facing death together. Sure, they seemed happy that the other wasn’t hurt, but they seemed distant.

“Ronald. How are you?”

“I’m fine, Hermione. I have to take potions everyday for the rest of the summer and I have to continue rubbing a salve into the scars for a little while, but it’s not as bad as it could have been. How about you?”

“I’m alright. I didn’t get hurt nearly as bad as you were. It was only because I was at the Ministry that I got taken to St. Mungo’s. Otherwise, I would have been okay with Mme. Pomphrey.”

And after that they just fell into a polite silence. “They’re so young,” McGonagall thought. “They’re probably still trying to comprehend what they’re getting into. And once they do, they will be even stronger friends than they were before.” It wouldn’t be until the start of the next term that she would realize how wrong she was.

* * *

Many students had a vision of what the Slytherin common room looked like. The Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors in particular expected it to resemble a cold and damp dungeon full of torture devices and books on the darkest magic. This was because the Slytherins had the reputation for being dark Death Eater-wannabes and truth be told many of them were. The kids who thought this forgot the little fact that Dumbledore ran the school.

No, despite popular belief, the Slytherin common room was a perfect image of wealth and luxury. Its high ceilings were supported by dark stone walls hung with rich patterned tapestries that were matched by ornate rugs covering the slate floor. Against the eastern wall was an enormous fireplace of obsidian. When the fire was lit, the light glittered off the intricately carved snakes engraved into the rock. The room was a legacy to the Slytherins from the founder of their house and had been added to and refined by rich Slytherin graduates since then.

Draco sat staring at the coals from a fire that had died hours earlier. The glow from the coals reflected off the obsidian, causing shadows and flashes of light to dance around the room

“Who are you, Potter?” he whispered, his eyes flashing with the light from the coals.

Potter had performed the most stupid amount of complicated magic. “Why bother stealing the girl’s book and expending all that energy to do it when he could’ve just asked her for it,” he thought. “He was the boy-who-lived. Of course, she would let him use it. He obviously didn’t want people to know that he wanted the information in that book. So he took it without anyone knowing or seeing, apart from myself of course. He went about it like a Slytherin would, though in a stupid Gryffindor way. He did it in front of almost the entire staff in a room where it is forbidden to use magic. What could have been so important that made him do that.”

The glow of the coals lit Draco’s tense face. “What to do,” he thought, “what to do?”

* * *

Harry walked out of the Great Hall, his heart pounding in his chest. He tried to look calm and not draw attention to himself, waiting for a teacher to stop and ask what he was doing by stealing the girl’s book. As the door shut behind him, he looked down at what he was carrying. His knuckles were white from gripping the two books pressed against the inside of his forearm. Releasing a breath, he relaxed his grip on the books and forced his heart to calm down as he walked toward a small statue several yards from the doors that had just closed behind him. He made sure nobody was around and then ran his fingers along the edges of the square top of the short marble pillar holding the statue. He squinted at the wall on the left side of the statue and then walked through it, appearing in an unused classroom on the seventh-floor corridor.

Several months earlier, for various reasons, he had stopped using the Room of Requirements for his personal use. The DA knew about the room. And after Marietta Edgecombe told Mme. Umbridge about the DA, not only did Umbridge know about the room, so did the entire Inquisitorial Squad. That didn’t include any of the nonmembers who were told about it by their DA friends.

He had needed to blow off a lot of steam over the last several months and he hadn’t wanted Ron or Hermione knowing about it. He thought maybe he was experiencing some of the Dark Lord’s emotions. It certainly seemed that he was feeling emotions that were not proportional to the situations that caused them. The frequent bouts of intense happiness and anger that occurred periodically throughout the day had almost driven him insane. So he would sneak away to the classroom using various hidden passages that he had discovered on his own and with the Marauders Map. Ron and Hermione hated when he went anywhere without telling them and the Room of Requirement would be one of the first places they looked.

Harry sat down in the middle of the plain classroom facing the door leading to the hallway. All of the desks were pushed to the back of the room. The morning light shone through the windows despite the fact that the room was actually in the interior of the school.

He placed the books in front of him. _“Draw the rune with your wand while focusing on the image of the rune, then push your magic into the rune to power it.”_

He opened the small journal to a random page toward the end of the book. The top of the page displayed a rune with a caption underneath that read simply, “To Block”. It was followed by a brief description of how the rune was often used to describe walls and its first documented use. Harry flicked his wrist and his wand shot into his hand. Thinking of his encounter with Tom Riddle in the Chamber of Secrets, he drew the rune. It hung in the air in front of him in what looked like thin ropes of flame.

“It looks exactly like the one in the book, but how am I supposed to push my magic into it?” he thought. Acting from instinct, his eyes shut and he cleared his mind. He tried to feel his magic inside, to find the feeling of power he had experienced when he first picked up his wand in Diagon Alley or when he accidentally apparated onto the roof of his primary school.

There. He let out a breath of amazement. It was like a small warmth inside of him, buried deep within his very being. He tried to bring it closer so he could feel the warmth better but it pulled at him instead. There was a jerk and he felt his mind strain. It was the most bizarre feeling Harry had ever experienced. It was like his mind was being forced to separate from his body. The warmth jerked again, this time with a sharp stab of pain at the center of his brain. He panicked and struggled as it tried to pull his mind from his body and encompass it. It had grown from a simple jerk to a constant pull. He could feel his throat tearing as he screamed. Blood streamed from his nose and he felt sweat dripping from his skin as his muscles seized. The inner battle was beginning to take its toll on his physical body. He couldn’t tell how long it had been since he had first closed his eyes. The pain was worse than that of the Cruciatus curse. That only caused physical pain. He felt this pain in his soul as well as his body. There was a sharp snap and his eyes rolled into the back of his head as he passed out.

* * *

Dumbledore sat in his office with his eyes closed. It had been a very long week. He reached into his bright green robes and pulled out a lemon drop out of a pocket that was decorated with Nargles flying along the stitching. His tired blue eyes opened briefly and peered over the half moon spectacles to inspect it. After deciding that it hadn’t picked up any fluff or hair from the inside of his pocket, he blew on it and popped it into his mouth.

Yes, it had been a very long week and not even his lemon drops seemed able to lessen his tension. He paused, considering his position as headmaster and leader of the Order of the Phoenix. He wasn’t impressed with what he had done. He had made many mistakes the past year and now the chickens were coming home to roost. Dumbledore bit down on his candy and started chewing.

“Do you think he can forgive me?” he asked Fawkes, who chirped sadly in response.

The list of mistakes he had made about the boy’s affairs were too long to be forgivable. “I pushed him away thinking that Tom would use him to attack me,” he told Fawkes. “I had him take Occlumency lessons with Severus hoping they could both work past their issues. But, being a natural Occlumens, I overlooked the fact that in order for the lessons to work there had to be mutual trust from the start. The lessons failed and it put Harry in an even weaker state of mind. I wasn’t sure yet whether Tom was aware of the nature of his bond with Harry and I didn’t want to alert him by giving Harry more detailed information, so I didn’t. Tom was a step ahead of me the entire time. He already knew of the bond they shared and was experimenting with it even as I decided not to tell Harry about it.” Fawkes trilled gently, trying to comfort his friend.

“Headmaster, look!” whispered Phineas Black’s portrait from behind him.

Dumbledore lifted his head to see what the previous headmaster was looking at, a little silver instrument that was spinning so fast its metal arms were blurred. Dumbledore’s eyes stared uncomprehending as his mind played catch-up. The instrument detected large bursts of magic coming from within the castle walls. He quickly stood up from his chintz armchair, fearing that Voldemort had somehow managed to find his way into the school and was beginning his attack. He glanced at his other instruments. If it was an attack, they would show other evidence proving it, but they continued operating normally. He looked back at the first instrument to find that it was no longer spinning out of control and was running as it normally did. Dumbledore collapsed back into his chair.

“You’re getting slow, Albus,” Phineas said. “You must rest. It has been a long week and your body and magic are exhausted from your duel with the Dark Lord. You cannot continue at this rate. You must pace yourself, or at least entrust some of these devices to others so you do not have so much to keep your eye on.”

“Phineas, I will not place any of these burdens on anyone other than myself.”

“At least give some of them to Alastor. He —“

“Alastor has enough to deal with already managing the Order’s operations. No, this is something I must do. I cannot trust the safety of our world’s students with anyone but myself.

Phineas made an exasperated noise and walked out of his frame. The other portraits whispered amongst themselves as he left. Dumbledore sighed, turning his attention back to the little device that been whirring around a minute before and wondering what could have caused such a large flux of magic and if it was a danger to the school.

* * *

His eyes slowly opened to see the ceiling above.

“Where am I?” Harry wondered.

He moved his head slightly to the right and the rest of the room went with it several times over. His stomach took a violent turn with the room and he vomited. Wiping his mouth, he carefully moved his head back to its previous position. The room spun the other direction and Harry threw up again. He closed his eyes and fell back into oblivion.

Harry’s first thought as he awoke a few hours later was how disgusting the room smelled. “The last thing I remember is how — how what?” He sat up and his head throbbed in pain. Looking around the room, his eyes rested on the glowing rune hanging in the air. He pulled back his sleeve to check the time on his watch; it was close to dinnertime. His eyes slid from his watch to his feet. Disgusted, he stepped away from whatever they were standing in and picked his wand up from where it had rolled after he had passed out. He cleaned up the mess with a vanishing spell and then aimed a Scourgify at the floor and his robes.

Finished with damage control, he looked back up at the rune. It was pulsing with energy. Harry started walking around it, but when he was almost parallel with the rune’s edge, ran into a wall. It was completely invisible and extended as far as he could reach. He stepped back staring in awe.

As he stood there, he realized he could feel his whole body humming. The warmth he had been struggling with earlier felt as though it encompassed him. “What is this?” Harry asked himself breathlessly. It was as though his entire body was alive with energy. He put his hand up to touch the rune, but as he did, it fell apart. The thin ropes of magic that once were the rune dispersed into the air around him. He pushed his hand further. The wall that had been there had disappeared as well.

Harry grinned. “I have an advantage now, maybe not against the Dark Lord or Bellatrix Lestrange, but certainly against the average Death Eater,” he thought, eyeing his two new books with glee. He reached down to pick them up and headed for dinner. He had spent almost the entire day in the classroom and he didn’t want anyone to worry he was missing. “Though,” he thought, “I don’t know who would notice or care since Ron and Hermione aren’t here.” His mind was going a mile a minute thinking of all the things he had discovered over the past couple days and the impact they would have on his future.

“Something happened today, something that changed me. I feel so much more alive than I did before, like I could do anything.” Harry mulled it over. “Magic tried to pull my mind from me, but I won. So logically, that would mean that I pulled the magic into my mind. But what does ‘pulled the magic into my mind’ mean? It’s not like magic works in a logical way, most of the time anyway…” His mind continued to think about the possible ramifications of what had happened as he walked into the Great Hall.

“Harry!”

He heard it faintly behind all of the theories and plots churning around in his mind.

“Harry!!”

Startled out of his thoughts, Harry turned to the source of the voice shouting his name.

“Hello Hermione,” he said smiling, quickening his pace as he approached her and Ron.

“Ron,” he said as he nodded to him. “How are you? How are your, umm…well, your injuries? I’m so sorry. I almost did to you what I did to Siri –”

Hermione interrupted him. “Harry, we don’t blame you for any of it. We went with you of our own free will. You didn’t force us. Our injuries were caused by Death Eaters who were twice, almost three times, our age and experience, not by you.”

“Yeah, mate,” added Ron, “It’s not your fault and neither was Sirius. It was Vol- Voldemort that caused it and Bellatrix who did it. Don’t worry we’ll get that bi–“

“Ouch! What was that for, Hermione?” He looked at Hermione who had just kicked him under the table.

Hermione glared back at him. “Anyway, Harry, you mustn’t blame yourself. We don’t. We never will.”

Harry nodded. If they weren’t going to blame him for their injuries, then he wasn’t either. He couldn’t help but feel something was different about his two friends. The both seemed tense and nervous and wouldn’t make eye contact with him or each other.

It didn’t matter. He had other things to think about, like Sirius. He wasn’t injured; he was dead. Nothing could bring him back. Harry thought, “I will avenge your death, Sirius. I’ve lost a lot of people and indirectly caused many of their deaths. But, I will not sit by and feel sorry for myself this time. I will find you, Lestrange, and this time it won’t be a failed Cruciatus curse that I hit you with.”

“Harry?” Hermione said a little nervously. “Are you alright?”

“Sorry, I was distracted. What were you saying?”   
Hermione hesitated a little. “I asked how you had been the last couple days?”

Harry debated taking the two of them away to tell them about the book he had taken… well… stolen from the Library, and about his fight with his magic or about the prophecy.  
He smiled. “I didn’t really do anything. I just kind of sat around, slept a little. I was worried about both of you. I’m just glad you two are alright.”

Dumbledore sat at the Staff table watching Harry with curiosity. Harry’s aura had changed in the past day. Snape leaned in to speak to Dumbledore.

“He’s found his core, Headmaster. You see it in his aura too, don’t you? Don’t ask me how the boy worked up the mental ability to do that when he could never clear his mind during the entire time he worked with me. He is as arrogant and as stupid as his–“

“Yes, I noticed. Though I hadn’t yet come to that conclusion,” Dumbledore said. Could that have been the cause of the power surge that occurred this morning? It was possible, but that would mean that Harry possessed a large amount of magic. Though the boy is an amazing person, he had always displayed mediocre magical ability both in his classes and the tests we’ve performed. But, maybe we missed something. Albus’s eyes began twinkling like crazy.

Severus pulled away in disgust. “What are you so excited about? You can’t possibly be thinking that your golden boy is somehow surpassing – ah…” Snape stopped mid-sentence and sneered as he turned back to his meal.

* * *

Thanks for reading people and please review :)


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I do not and am not trying to own any of the works or ideas of J.K. Rowling. She is the sole owner of that material.

Chapter 3

Harry sat on his bed at his aunt and uncle’s house in Surrey. He hated Surrey. He hated his aunt and uncle. He did not want to be here. He slammed his fist against the wall and watched as a small crack appeared where he hit it.

“BOY!! What the hell do you think you’re doing up there?”

Harry fumed. “Sorry Uncle!” he called.

God dammit. It wasn’t like he could look back happily on the last couple weeks of school. There had been some good things. He discovered the book in the library that forced him to start thinking about things he had never considered before.

Discovering runic magic was also a good thing. He wasn’t close to being a proficient user of that branch of magic, but it was something he could work towards. Hopefully, it could give him an edge in the future, but he knew that it was going to take lots of work before he ever reached that point.

Both the discoveries were completely overshadowed by the loss of Sirius and the prophecy that Dumbledore had told him about. He had accepted Sirius’s death; he had died fighting like he would have wanted. Sirius knew the risks. Harry couldn’t blame himself for that.

And the prophecy…? He didn’t want to think about it yet. He didn’t want to think about it at all, because it meant he would be forced into fighting the Dark Lord. On his mental list of priorities, it was making its way to the top of things to think about, but it was Ron and Hermione that really bothered him.

It was funny. Of everything, it was the change in Ron and Hermione that bothered him the most. The last two days they spent together before the summer holidays were strange at the best of times and uncomfortable at the worst. Ron’s jokes fell flat and every conversation seemed to suffer a stroke and ended in awkward silence.

It wasn’t just the conversation that was uncomfortable. Both Ron and Hermione seemed constantly lost in thought, which was weird, but even weirder was that Hermione didn’t insist on studying for the next year’s classes. Harry had fond memories of Hermione trying to get him and Ron to study in past years, telling them they should be preparing and that it could only help them. This year, she never brought it up.

“What happened? What is different?” Harry thought.

It’s not like they hadn’t faced danger before. Every year, they ended up in the hospital wing with injuries of some kind from their adventures. Apparently, this time was different. Sure, they had ended up at St. Mungo’s and Ron’s injury had needed the Healers the hospital offered, but Hermione’s injury hadn’t been that bad.

Harry couldn’t tell the difference between this year’s adventure and last year’s, that was for sure. It was the same stuff he had been facing since first year. And as he thought this, Harry started feeling ill. He knew what was different.

Ron and Hermione were never there with him when stuff got really dirty, when the situation changed from the possibility of breaking a leg to the possibility of being murdered. The chance of dying had always been there, but they’d never faced a person who was actually trying to kill them. It was an awful thing to experience.

“People always think it’s great to be the hero,” Harry thought, closing his eyes as he drifted to sleep.

“But it truly is awful. The fear that your life could be over any second makes your mind race in panic. Logic disappears and your only thought is escape. Your heart pounds, your body courses with adrenalin, and every noise and movement makes your mind reel in terror like a pig when it smells the blood and death of its own kind.” Voldemort finished Harry’s thought.

His eyes opening in horror at the sound of Voldemort’s voice, Harry scrambled into a corner of the room, and realized as he did so that this room wasn’t the one on Privet Drive.

“You’re like cockroach fleeing from the light, Harry,” Voldemort said with disgust. “There’s no need to fear. I don’t intend to hurt you in here.”

“Where am I? How did I get here?” Harry demanded. His eyes flicked around the unfamiliar room searching for an escape.

“Calm down, Harry. This is a dream. You and I are in your mind. As I said before, I wish you no harm.”

Harry looked around, taking in his surroundings. He was in a small room, though it had very high ceilings. It was a mess with papers and books haphazardly thrown about. The furniture was old and beaten, but it looked like someone had been mending the fabrics and started refinishing the wood.

“Come sit, Harry. Have a drink with me.” Voldemort patted the chair he was standing behind and walked to the desk to open a drawer, “Pity,” he said. “Your mind can only furnish us with a cheap whiskey, but this will have to do.”

Harry carefully walked over to sit in the chair opposite the one Voldemort offered. Voldemort seemed almost sane right now. As Harry sat, he glanced around the room that represented his mind, noting what a disaster it was.

“Your mind looks like this because this is what you are,” said Voldemort. He stood next to Harry’s chair, placed a glass in front of him and then took a sip from his own. Voldemort looked around the room. “Pathetic. You’re a mess, Harry. Five years at Hogwarts and this is all you can show for yourself — broken furniture, cheap whiskey and a couple of battered, broken books thrown around the room. Ahh… but that’s not all, is it? You have several books on your shelf. Let’s have a look, shall we?” Voldemort walked behind the desk to look at the bookshelf.

Bewildered, Harry just followed him with his eyes. He had no idea what was going on. They were in his mind? Voldemort obviously used the scar to get in.

Voldemort interrupted his thoughts, “Well, my boy, what knowledge you do have tucked into your mind seems to be developing into quite a little collection. It looks like the knowledge you might find in a first-year Slytherin. Come and see.”

Harry sat where he was.

Voldemort, seeing that Harry wasn’t going to get up, turned back to the shelf and started reading titles and authors. “ _Basic Magic_ , by Harry Potter; _How to Lie_ , by Harry Potter; _Will_ , by Harry Potter; _How Not to be Noticed_ , by Harry Potter; _How to Withstand Pain_ , by Harry Potter — and you’ve started a little compendium of torture techniques based on personal experience.” Voldemort chuckled a little. “Not exactly what the savior of the wizarding world needs to know. Especially if he is destined to face me.”

“Wait… you know the prophecy?” said Harry. “How? I saw it break.”

“I managed to — ah — acquire the old fortune teller who made it. Right from underneath the old man’s nose, too. I’m sure he’s realized by now. You should have heard her screams. They were… thrilling!”

Harry paled. “What do you want here?”

“I came to make a proposition. Join me. Come with me and I will train you as my apprentice. Your friends have left you, though you’ve only just realized it. They can’t risk their lives for you. How could they —”

“No, they hav —”

“Harry! Harry… lets not be naïve here.” Voldemort turned his back to the bookshelf putting the desk between them. “Why would they stay? They don’t know loss like you do. They just had a taste of it and decided it didn’t taste good, much like your whiskey,” he laughed. “You have nothing to offer them but death, Harry. You are alone and you are just beginning to see it. Your godfather is dead and your friends are gone. So, what do you have left? Come with me. By my side, you’ll be honored and feared.” Voldemort placed both his hands on the desk and stared at Harry intently.

“No! I can’t. I won’t. My friends may have left me,” Harry said, shuddering at the thought and hoping it wasn’t actually happening, “and the man I loved like a father is dead, but I cannot betray their names any more than I could betray the names of my mother and father and all those who died at your hand. I will not betray them.” Harry felt as though he was about to cry. He could not directly confront this man who had infiltrated his mind. He could see the state his mind was in and the little knowledge it held. He was broken and knew he would die. He had failed.

Voldemort sighed. “I thought as much. I hoped you would reconsider.” He paused and picked up the glass that rested on the desk. “I do have something else though. You could call it a request.”

After taking a sip, he continued. “I am bored, Harry. This war is not simply ideological. I… enjoy it.”

Voldemort began to grin insanely. “… the blood, watching the pigs squeal in fear. But that is only one side of it. The Ministry and the Order of the Phoenix are all that oppose me. They’re almost as pathetic as this room. … unable to do anything to stop me, always a step behind… it’s boring!” Voldemort finished this last in a scream.

“You could be very powerful if you had the knowledge. So, I’m going to help you, Harry. You’ve seen your core and you have connected with it. You broke through the blocks you placed on yourself when you were a small child. I may have marked you, but you are not my equal.” With that, Voldemort whipped out his wand. In a fury, he conjured several ebony bookshelves next to Harry’s battered wooden shelf. “I will help you become that!”

Harry shrieked in pain as Voldemort forced knowledge into his mind. Summoning book after book of spells and information, he placed them on the new shelves. Every summons sent Harry into new spasms of pain. Harry’s mind and body screamed against it. It was wrong. No one should touch another’s mind this way.

As Voldemort finished, he crossed the room, grabbed Harry, who was falling out of his chair, by the neck and lifted him up. Harry writhed and screamed in agony. Voldemort closed his hand around Harry’s neck, blocking his windpipe. Harry’s struggles became weaker and weaker until he hung limply in Voldemort’s grasp.

“I know where you live, Harry,” Voldemort hissed, “I left you a present. Don’t leave it for too long or she’ll spoil.”

With that, Voldemort threw him against the wall. Harry fell into darkness, listening to the echoes of that screaming laughter.

* * *

Tonks sat on the sidewalk across the street from Harry’s house. She wasn’t worried about being seen. It was late and she had cast a Notice-Me-Not charm on herself.

Guard duty was so boring. She sat and stared up at the sky, not really thinking about anything. That was generally the best state of mind for guard duty and one of the first things they taught you in Auror training. If you were thinking, you could be distracted by your thoughts. If you were alert, you could tire out easily. The best thing was just to sit there. Then if something happened, you could just react to it.

It was almost the end of her shift when she heard screams coming from Harry’s room. She leapt from the curb and ran across the street into the house. Vernon was yelling in response to the screams and had thrown open the door to Harry’s bedroom just as Tonks started up the stairs, all traces of clumsiness gone. Vernon recoiled from the doorway in horror and fell back pale and trembling. Tonks rushed past him and almost reacted the same.

Harry writhed on the floor, screaming and laughing as his fingers clawed at his eyes. There was blood all over his hands and the floor.

Tonks paused only a second before she grabbed Harry and disapparated with him to the front porch of Grimmauld Place. She ran to open the door while still carrying Harry and rushed inside. Remus hurried into the entrance hall with Snape as they heard Mrs. Black join Harry’s screaming.

“What happened?” Snape asked, as he hurried over to grab the boy from Tonks and take him to the living room.

“I don’t know,” Tonks panted. “I was sitting outside when he just started screaming inside his room. The wards weren’t disturbed. I didn’t see anything happen,” she answered, sounding panicked.

“I’ll call Albus!” Remus ran out of the room to call him as Dumbledore walked in through the opposite door shouting, “Harry’s been taken! He’s not at his Aunt and Uncle’s.” Dumbledore stopped when he saw Harry on the couch. “What happened?”

Snape forced several potions down Harry’s throat and numbed his arms to keep him from damaging his eyes any more. “We don’t know, Headmaster. Nobody entered the house, so I suspect it was a poison or a mental attack of some kind.”

Harry’s eyes flew open and he cried out in pain. His gaze flicked around the room as he realized he couldn’t see anything.

“Harry, it’s okay. You’re safe,” Dumbledore said, trying to calm him down.

“Professor, he hurt somebody. Voldemort did. And they are near my house somewhere. He left them there!”

“Harry, Tom doesn’t know where you live. The wards prevent that. He’s just —“

“No! He said he knew where I lived and that he left me a present!” Harry’s face filled with fear.

Dumbledore looked down into the boy’s unseeing eyes and glanced at Snape, who just stared unblinkingly back at him. He turned and hurried from the room.

They heard him race out the front door and the crack as he disapparated without closing it.

Remus ran back into the room with Madame Pomfrey behind him. She looked at Harry as he passed out from blood loss and pain and started issuing orders.

* * *

Dumbledore sat in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place. He had called an emergency Order meeting.

The room was quiet. The entire Weasley family stood in shock in the corner. The rest of the Order milled about, whispering with each other and trading rumors. Occasionally, someone shot pitying looks over at the distraught family of redheads.

Dumbledore cleared his throat and called the meeting to order. “Tonight, around one a.m., Harry Potter’s mind was attacked by Voldemort.”

Gasps were heard throughout the room. Snape snorted to himself in the corner and thought that they were all like children. It was a wonder they could do anything to stop the Dark Lord.

“Severus, could you please tell us your findings?”

“Of course, Headmaster. After Madame Pomfrey and I stabilized Potter’s condition, I took a look inside his mind… as you requested… but I wasn’t able to look in detail for two reasons. The Dark Lord might have noticed me in Potter’s mind, a risk because of the connection through the curse scar, and Potter’s mind has begun developing basic Occlumency shields in reflex to the Dark Lord’s constant attacks. We did not want to disturb the shields and cause more damage than was already done.

“What I did find was the Dark Lord tampered with Harry’s mind. We won’t know what it was specifically until he wakes up and can tell us if he remembers. If not, we will have to figure out on our own what the damage was and if it will become a threat.”

“It could be that he attempted to alter Harry’s personality. That is only a possibility though. We won’t know for sure until he has recovered.”

“Thank you, Severus. Harry was not Voldemort’s only goal tonight,” Dumbledore said, addressing the order again. “He succeeded in kidnapping two individuals. Professor Trelawny disappeared around noon and is presumed dead.”

Again, whispers flooded the room. The few who were aware of the prophecy — Snape, Lupin, Mad-eye and Kingsley Shacklebolt — all exchanged worried glances. If Voldemort was aware of the prophecy, his tactics would become much more aggressive than they had been.

Dumbledore silenced the order by raising his hand. “I would like us all to offer our condolences to the Weasley family. The other person that was taken today was young Ginevra Weasley. We are not sure how she was taken or when, but it is safe to assume that this was aimed at hurting Harry. The Dark Mark had been cast.”

“The body was found at a small park a block from Harry’s family home. I was able to retrieve it and obliviate the Dursleys before the ministry arrived at the scene.”

The kitchen was silent. It wasn’t a tactical attack, just a sheer cold-hearted attack to cause pain. The only advantage it had was to reduce morale.

Molly sobbed in the corner and Arthur tried to comfort her. All the Weasleys looked like they were in shock. Dumbledore looked at them sadly as he ended the meeting and the Order’s members quietly offered apologies and condolences to the family as they left the room.

Ron caught Dumbledore’s eye. The boy looked sad, but not in the same state of shock as his brothers. His eyes burned with anger and resolve.

Dumbledore smiled sadly. These deaths were always tragic, though they had their benefits. A death of a loved one drove many to fight in this unforgiving war. It was all that kept some from rolling over and giving in to Tom and his followers.

* * *

Harry woke up in darkness panicking.

“Where am I!?” he called out, as he opened his sightless eyes.

“Calm down, Potter. You’re safe,” replied Snape as he pushed Harry’s arms back against his sides. “Do not touch your eyes, Potter. They are already damaged enough without you scratching at them again.”

It would be a miracle if the boy’s eyes healed at all. Dumbledore was currently searching through old rituals and potions trying to find something that could help. As Mad-Eye said when Albus told several people about the boy’s new condition, “Albus, the Chosen One cannot be blind! We need to do something for him even if it means tracking down that crazy spell creator of Grindelwald’s who made my eye.”

Harry slowly laid back and tried to calm down. All he could see was black, not even a tiny bit of light. He lay there for several minutes before he asked, “Who was it, Professor?”  

“The Weasley girl,” Snape responded slowly, prepared to restrain Harry again if necessary.

“I’m sorry,” Harry whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

Several bloody tears slipped from his eyes. He slammed them shut and forced himself to stop crying because the tears made his eyes burn.

Snape looked at Harry curiously. “Potter, what did the Dark Lord do?”

Harry did not respond at first. Snape began to grow impatient and was about to reprimand him when Harry started to speak.

“He knew the prophecy and he offered me a position as his apprentice.”

Snape sucked in his breath.

Harry continued, his voice empty of emotion. “I turned him down. The Dark Lord cannot offer me what I want.”

Snape looked at Harry with interest. Calling him the Dark Lord was a term of respect. It wasn’t the idiotic he-who-must-not-be-named nor was it the equally ridiculous pseudonym Tom Riddle had given himself. Snape shook himself, realizing that Harry was still talking.

“We were in my mind. He had poured himself a drink and was reading the books on the shelves.”

Snape’s interest grew. The fact the Dark Lord was able to interact with Harry’s mind at that level showed how close their connection really was. Potter would need to master Occlumency and Legilimency if he was going to resist. The Dark Lord could not be allowed to continue accessing the boy’s thoughts. It was not only damaging to his brain but Harry would not have an advantage if the Dark Lord could enter his mind whenever he wanted.

“He told me that he was bored and he wanted someone who could challenge him,” said Harry.

Snape’s eyebrows raised. It actually didn’t seem out of character. The Dark Lord had been making insane decisions like this since his resurrection. He had allowed prisoners to conveniently find a wand so they thought they could escape, though it was just a ploy. For Voldemort, the war had become a game and he enjoyed playing it more than he did winning.

Voldemort’s actions were getting worse and it was making some of the inner circle members nervous. It wasn’t a game to them. Their families were fighting and dying for the cause. He would have to let Dumbledore know that the Dark Lord’s games were getting riskier.

Harry continued speaking.

“He conjured books and the shelves to put them on. It hurt so much. It felt like my brain was going to explode with information. It still feels like that. None of it is organized. It’s just swirling around in a mass of words. Make it stop!” Harry whispered. “Please, make it stop!” Harry verged on breaking down again and his arms trembled.

“Potter!” Harry didn’t respond.

“Potter…. Harry!” Harry’s eyelids twitched in response.

“You have to clear your mind and find that room you were in before. I will try and guide you, but you must trust me or you will have to do it alone.”

* * *

Thanks for reading everyone. Review review review :)


	4. Chapter 4

  
Chapter 4  
  
Lying in his bed, Harry focused on clearing his mind like he did during the last week of school. He could feel Snape’s presence following his consciousness as he cleared his mind and tried to find the room.  Harry could feel the room, but he couldn’t make it materialize around him.   
  
He was floating in darkness. There wasn’t anything around him. He couldn’t feel his body. He was just a presence in a sea of nothing. He searched for Snape’s mind — to ask him what to do next — but he couldn’t sense him. Harry thought he should be panicking but he wasn’t able to. In fact, he couldn’t feel anything, really. He felt that he could just drift around in this nothingness forever.   
  
Snape was sitting in the chair next to Harry’s bed. His head was throbbing. He stared at Harry.   
  
“I couldn’t follow him,” he thought.   
  
The little wretch couldn’t trust him after all. He had been following the boy when he had suddenly hit a wall of energy and was thrown out.   
  
“Fine, Potter. Do it on your own,” Snape stood and walked from the room, his cloak billowing behind him.   
  
“Snape, how is the boy doing?” Moody asked.   
  
Snape sneered back, “He won’t be waking up for a very long time,” and then turned his back to Moody and started walking towards the front door.   
  
“What did you do to him, you Death Eater?” Moody whispered threateningly as he drew his wand.   
  
“Put you wand away, Auror. I didn’t do anything. I offered my help and he refused it like the thoughtless child he is. I have work I need to do that is more important than holding the hand of Dumbledore’s golden boy.” With that, Snape stormed out of the house.  
  
Moody stood there, wondering what Potter had gotten himself into.  
  
* * *  
  
Voldemort sat in the thrown room of his new fortress. They had relocated here while the Ministry was still distracted by his infiltration of the Department of Mysteries.   
  
“Luciusssss,” Voldemort hissed to the masked men before him. “Come forward.”  
  
“My lord,” Lucius said, kneeling in the center of the room, “Thank you for releasing me from Azkaban.”  
  
“Silenccce! I did not ask for your thanksss. You failed me, Lucius. You went up against teenagers! Teenagers! And you lost the prophecy and forced me to show myself earlier than necessary.” Voldemort paused. “I need you to call your son. I have a job for him.”  
  
Lucius’ head started to rise to look at his master, but he quickly fought the urge and lowered it. “My lord I can do anything you need him to do. He doesn’t —”   
  
Lucius dissolved into screams and collapsed against the floor under the Cruciatus.   
  
“Lucius, you will bring your son before me, or the Malfoys will not see the end of this war.”  
  
Lucius brought himself back up to a kneeling position, his breath erratic and his body shaking from the after effects of the spell. “Yes, my lord. I will bring him.” Lucius stood up and walked gracefully from the room. Though, if anyone was watching closely, they would have seen his fingers twitching inside his sleeve from the aftereffects of the Cruciatus curse.  
  
* * *  
  
Draco was incredibly bored, sitting alone in the library at Malfoy Manor. His summer was already looking pretty dull. He couldn’t leave the house for fear of getting brought in by the Aurors for questioning. It also didn’t look like he would be doing anything for the Dark Lord either.   
  
His father had left several hours earlier for a meeting with the Dark Lord. Draco had asked if he could come, even though he knew he couldn’t go into the actual meeting because he wasn’t marked. His father, though, had flat out refused.   
  
Draco sighed, frustrated. He felt so useless. He had spent the last two weeks of school following Potter, and all he had learned was that Potter had been keeping secrets. Although, those secrets did have to do with the amount of magical power he had and his abilities in performing magic.   
  
It was obnoxious. It was like he just decided to stop hiding who he was. Oddly enough, it seemed like Draco was the only one that noticed. Though he was sure that it hadn’t escaped Dumbledore’s attention.   
  
That old man seemed to know everything that was going on in the school. It frustrated many of the Slytherin students to no end. They had all tried to bring Dark books and artifacts into the school. But several days afterward, many woke up to find the books missing. There were some who figured out a way to get around the Headmaster but they weren’t telling anyone. How Potter had learned the one Dark spell that Draco had seen the boy cast was beyond him.   
  
He was probably under more scrutiny that any other student in Hogwarts. Hell, he wouldn’t be surprised if Potter had his own bodyguard that followed him around invisibly.   
  
Draco continued to sit and think about the mystery that was Harry Potter. His father came in an hour later.   
  
“Draco, you must come with me. The Dark Lord wishes to see you.”  
  
Draco, startled out of his thoughts, looked up at his father. His eyes had a worried edge to them and he looked a little shaken up.   
  
“Of course, Father. Does he require me now?” Draco asked, curious as to what the Dark Lord wanted. He didn’t think it was to be marked. Those were special events and were usually planned out in well advance. The marking wouldn’t just be for him either; they would mark several people at once.   
  
No, it wasn’t to be marked. “I’ll go get dressed. I’ll be back in a minute.”  
  
Lucius stood in the library door and watched as his son walked confidently past him to go grab his things. He was nervous about what the Dark Lord wanted Draco to do.   
  
The Dark Lord was furious with him for failing his last mission. To punish him for his failure in the Department of Mysteries, he was using Draco for this mission (that would likely be very difficult and would end up getting Draco killed or caught.)   
  
There wasn’t anything he could do at this point. He had invested too much of his life into the Dark Lord to pull out now. It was a problem, and he hoped that that investment wouldn’t get his entire family killed.   
  
The Dark Lord had changed since his resurrection. Lucius remembered when he first joined the Death Eaters. The Dark Lord had been a handsome, charming man. When he walked into a room, people would stare at him, in awe of the power that seemed to roll off his body. You could feel the confidence and power coming of him in waves. He could convince anyone that his cause was right and good.   
  
He was terrifying when he had to be, though. That charming persona made him even scarier. He would smile at you. His eyes twinkled almost as much Dumbledore’s while he killed you. He was unbeatable. Nobody but Dumbledore could match his power and skill.   
  
Those were the good days. They had lived in comfort with the massive sums of money donated to the Dark Lord. Well supplied and well trained, they had fought for a cause they all believed in. But now… now the Dark Lord was insane. Prone to fits of extreme rage where he would torture and kill many of his servants. Lucius Malfoy couldn’t escape his decision to join the Dark Lord. He just hoped that decision would see them all through the end of the war.   
  
Draco came up behind him. “I’m ready.”   
  
Lucius nodded and led him to the fireplace in the library. He threw the Floo powder in, turning the fire green.   
  
“Grab my hand, Draco. You won’t be able to go through on your own until you receive his mark.”   
  
Draco grabbed his father’s hand. As they stepped into the fire, his father’s other hand pressed against the dark mark on his arm. The library was silent as the fire turned back to its natural color.   
  
* * *  
  
How long had it been? Where was he? Who was he? He felt like this had been happening to him a lot.   
  
Harry tried shouting but found he didn’t have a body to shout with. He was just a pattern of thought floating through nothing. It didn’t feel right, though. Something was screaming at him to understand his situation.  
  
“Okay,” Harry thought. “What do I remember?” He strained, thinking back as far as he could, but all he could think of was the darkness that he was floating in. “Maybe it’s always been like this.”   
  
He fell back into the silence that surrounded him. There was no time here. There was no happiness or fear or sadness. It was simply nothingness. He could think, but not with emotion. The more he thought, the more he felt that he was missing something.   
  
Images slowly came to him: a dark haired man with a hooked nose sitting by his side at a bed, a tall red haired boy smiling as girl with curly hair smacked the back of his head. The image of a room came to him with the sound of screaming laughter. Harry tried to focus on that image, though he couldn’t think why. It just seemed important to him. The room began to focus and he could see the furniture around him. All of a sudden, he was there. The room was around him and he was no longer in the black nothingness.   
  
The abruptness of the change made him stagger to the ground. A body! He had a body again. He realized that he still didn’t know who he was, or what he was doing here. He picked himself up from the ground and settled into a chair. His head rested in his hands as he tried to get used to having a body again. The sudden occurrence of regaining his senses was giving him a headache.   
  
As the room stopped spinning around him, he glanced around, taking his bearings. The room wasn’t old, but it seemed worn. The furniture had dings and nicks taken out of it. He looked at the bookshelves and another bout of images assaulted him.   
  
He was eight years old and was running from his cousin. He tripped on a crack in the sidewalk and fell face first into the concrete. He felt an explosive burning pain come from his nose.   
  
“Hey there, freak,” Dudley said as him, as his friends caught up. “Looks like you can’t run away anymore.”  
  
Harry looked around and saw that he was outside of his house and Aunt Petunia was in the window, looking out at him. Harry stared back at her and she quickly shut the curtain as Dudley and his gang started moving toward him…  
  
The memory faded into another one. He remembered that this happened a year later. He had always been a smart boy and had gotten very good grades in school. He brought his report card home with him to show to his aunt. His aunt screamed at him because he had done better than Dudley. When his uncle came home, he accused him of cheating. That had been one of the worst beatings he had gotten. Almost as bad as the ones he got from performing accidental magic.   
  
He hadn’t been able to go to school for a week because he couldn’t walk. He supposed, now, looking back on it, that the only reason he had lived was because of his magic repairing his body. When he had returned to school the teachers had asked where he had been. He gave them the lamest excuse ever, saying that he had hurt himself falling down the stairs. He obviously hadn’t. He had the end of two black eyes. He walked with a limp and he couldn’t straighten his back because of the cuts from his uncle’s belt.   
  
The teacher had just nodded at him and gave him a stack of papers he needed to finish in order to catch up. It was then that he stopped trusting the adults in his life. None of them cared…  
  
The memory faded again.  
  
This time, he was in the room that he was currently in. He heard Voldemort explain himself and watched as he conjured the books. His memory-self collapsed, screaming, and fell out of his chair…  
  
The memory faded and Harry stood from his chair, knowing what he had to do. He remembered his conversation with Snape. It was when he heard about the books - he had said they had to go into his mind. Harry walked over to the bookshelf and grabbed the first book, The Basics of Dark Magic, by Tom Riddle, and started reading.   
  
* * *  
  
Dumbledore sat in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place. It had been a week since Snape had left Harry in his room. Even Dumbledore was starting to get nervous. Madame Pomfrey had diagnosed him as being in a magical coma. It seemed like everything had happened at once.   
  
The murder of Ginny Weasley was a major blow to her family and they were still trying to recover. The boys seemed to be dealing okay, but Arthur and Molly were still in shock over the death of their baby girl. They had had a strong magical connection to their seventh daughter. She would have become a very powerful witch eventually, just because of that. Dumbledore sighed. Such a loss. She would have been very good for the cause, especially because of her latent connection to Tom Riddle.   
  
How was he supposed to deal with this new situation with Harry, though? Madame Pomfrey said he could be in a coma for the rest of his life. Though Dumbledore doubted that. Harry always pulled himself out of situations like this. Knowing this only dropped his estimated time to months rather than years. Dumbledore only hoped Harry awoke before school started. Him not attending Hogwarts in the fall would be a major blow to the school’s morale.   
  
He had called an Order meeting for that night. They had to plan to at least fake an appearance of Harry at Hogwarts, or at least in Diagon Alley, in order to keep him in the public’s vision. They couldn’t risk losing the populous’ support just because Harry was momentarily incapacitated. The consequences of that could be too hard to recover from.   
  
They also needed to arrange a guard to keep Harry’s friends from being targeted. Ginny’s death had shown them how vulnerable his other friends were. They needed to be kept safe so they couldn’t be used against Harry or the Order.   
  
Dumbledore sat, sucking his lemon drop, thinking about the best way to go about all of these different topics.   
  
Several hours later, Dumbledore was still sitting in the kitchen at Grimmauld Place. The Order members slowly made their way into the room that served as their meeting room. Despite what Severus thought, they weren’t all immature children. There was a majority of rambunctious Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs that made up the corps fighters. But there were also the older members like Mad-Eye and Remus, several intelligence people like Severus, Mundungus Fletcher, and several others that didn’t want their identity released to the whole Order.   
  
Dumbledore watched his group of followers walk into the meeting, all chatting and exchanging news. Severus and the other intelligence officers hung around the corners of the room. Remus and Mad-Eye sat in the back, discussing something with each other intently. Dumbledore cleared his throat to silence everyone and began to explain his ideas of what needed to happen.   
  
* * *  
  
“What is wrong with Harry,” Lupin growled at Mad-Eye as they left their table at the Hog’s Head.   
  
Mad-Eye looked over and saw his friend’s brown eyes flaring with the werewolf’s amber color. The wolf in him was reacting to the threat to his pack.   
  
“Calm down, Remus. You’re just gonna get in trouble if you keep working yer self up like this.” His real eye glared at him until he saw Lupin start to calm down. “Why don’t you know any of this anyway? You were there when it all happened.”  
  
Remus sighed. “Albus keeps blackballing me every time I bring it up. The only thing I know was that Harry was attacked by Voldemort and that he didn’t fare well.”  
  
They reached the Apparition point and Disapparated to a point several blocks away from Grimmauld Place. Mad-Eye removed the disguises they were wearing. “Alright, look. He’s been in a coma for a week —”  
  
“WHAT!!” Remus roared.  
  
Mad-Eye silenced him. “Keep your voice down and get that wolf in you under control.”   
  
His gold eye spun around, searching for an attack. “That’s not all, ‘kay? His eyes are a mess, probably irrecoverable. Dumbledore is wracking his brains, trying to find something to fix it without it being something obvious like this damn eye of mine.”   
  
Remus growled a little. Mad-Eye stopped him with a glare before he continued.  
  
“Voldemort did something with his brain. Snape went up to help him but came down twenty minutes later in a pretty bad mood and Harry had then fallen into a coma. Whether it was during he was there or after he left I don’t know. I suspect Albus does, though.”  
  
Mad-Eye opened the front door of Grimmauld Place for the raging werewolf.   
  
“Why wouldn’t Albus tell me this? Why keep it from me?” asked Remus.   
  
Mad-Eye just looked at him. “I honestly have no idea, though Dumbledore usually has his reasons.” They went to the back of the kitchen. Remus’ eyes were a blazing gold color.   
  
“Calm down, would ya, Remus? If you still haven’t gotten the information you want by the end of this meeting, we can corner him. But for now, calm down and wait.”  
  
“I would, if I didn’t know that Sirius’s godson - the last member of my pack - wasn’t lying comatose a floor above me, and I can’t reach him.”   
  
Mad-Eye just shrugged as Dumbledore cleared his throat to begin the meeting.  
  
“As we begin our meeting, I would like to ask Severus if he has anything new to share with us?” Dumbledore said.  
  
Severus stepped out of his corner and began speaking. “The Dark Lord has been fairly quiet this past week. There was one meeting where he gave Draco a mission. What that mission is, none of us other Death Eaters were allowed to hear. It stands to reason that it is something to get back at Lucius for failing his previous mission. Whatever it is, I don’t believe it’s anything we need to worry about.”  
  
“Thank you, Severus,” Dumbledore paused. “I called this meeting because several things have come to my attention. We need to protect the rest of Harry’s friends. I’m open to suggestions of whether we should bring them here or provide a guard.”   
  
“Well, how many of them are there?” asked Emmeline Vance.  
  
“I believe that the ones that would require our protection are the Grangers, the Lovegoods, and the Longbottoms,” responded Dumbledore.   
  
There was some grumbling from the rest of the Order. “Could we just bring them here or set up safe houses for them or something? I don’t think anyone wants to get stuck doing guard duty,” said Kingsley Shacklebolt.   
  
Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled. “That was exactly what I was thinking.” He smiled benignly. “I will go see Mrs. Longbottom tomorrow if you and Alastor could see to moving the Grangers and the Lovegoods. That would be excellent.”   
  
Mad-Eye and Kingsley nodded.   
  
“Now, there is also the matter of Harry. As many of you are aware, he was severely injured during an encounter with Voldemort at the beginning of the summer. We are still unsure if he will have recovered by the time school starts. I would like to talk with Severus, Ron Weasley, and Alastor, to discuss an idea I have.” With that, Dumbledore ended the meeting.  
  
Ron was surprised. Why would Dumbledore want to talk to him? He made his way to Dumbledore as the rest of the Order made their way out of the kitchen.   
  
Remus gave Mad-Eye a look and he nodded back.  
  
 As soon as the last Order member left, Dumbledore began talking.   
  
“As I said, we are unsure when Harry will fully recover or not at all. I believe it will be necessary to have someone look like him and have them make several public appearances in order to keep the Wizarding world from panicking over his disappearance.”  
  
The three men stared at him. Fake appearances of Harry Potter?   
  
“It could work,” Ron said thoughtfully, startling Mad-Eye and Snape out of their shock. “It might even be worthwhile to have someone pretend to be him in classes until he recovers.”   
  
“Well, it wouldn’t fool the Dark Lord or his spies in the school. And it could prove to be disastrous if it ever got out that it wasn’t really Potter,” Snape stated, irritated that even when the boy was in a coma, he was causing problems.   
  
“Would it even be possible to fake the boy’s personality?” Mad-Eye asked. “It might be more work than it is worth.”  
  
“I don’t know. If the person was a decent actor, it might work. Harry usually keeps to himself and just hangs out with Hermione and me. It wouldn’t be too difficult, I don’t think. He doesn’t have many relationships with people outside of us and Neville,” Ron replied.  
  
“And the Lovegood girl,” interjected Mad-Eye.  
  
Dumbledore just sat, twinkling, at the three of them.  
  
“Well, if we’re going to go through with this scheme, you’ll need their help to teach the imposter how to act like Harry. You and Granger are too close to him,” Snape said, disgusted with the whole situation.  
  
“I think we should use Nymphadora for this. It would be too difficult to provide and take doses of Polyjuice,” Dumbledore said, smiling.  
  
“Tonks!” Ron laughed, “Oh, this’ll be interesting.”  
  
“What do you mean?” Mad-Eye asked.  
  
“Obviously, none of you have seen Harry that much. Tonks is too light hearted and fun. Harry’s seen and experienced things that no one should have to. He killed for the first time at the age of eleven.” Ron looked toward Dumbledore. “We’ll definitely need Neville and Luna soon if we’re going to do this.”   
  
Dumbledore nodded, curious as to what he had missed in his observations of Harry. Mad-Eye too was curious to see the children try and teach Tonks how to act like the boy. Especially since the Weasley boy seemed to think it was going to be much harder than they thought.   
  
* * *  
  
Draco appeared with a loud crack in the alley of a Muggle neighborhood. He was very nervous. This was not a good mission. His father had hinted to him before he Apparated away that he wasn’t expected to succeed. But, if he did, he would be welcomed into the Dark Lord’s ranks. It wasn’t that it was difficult. There was just a very high chance that he would be caught.   
  
Draco stood in the alley and leaned against a fence to try and calm down. If he could do this, he would redeem his father and start making a name for himself in the Dark Lord’s ranks.   
  
Determined to succeed, he walked down the alley. He wasn’t given anything to aid him. The only good thing about this situation was that he didn’t have the Ministry’s monitoring charms on his wand.   
  
He cast a glamour charm over his face, giving himself long brown hair that hung just below his ears. His face rounded a little, giving him a young boyish look and his eyes changed to a very ordinary brown to match his hair. He then cast a Disillusionment charm to further hide his identity and walked out into the street.   
  
“Right at the corner and four houses down,” he thought to himself. “On the North side of the street.”   
  
Draco stood across the road from the house that was targeted. He had orders to kill the family inside. Given who the target was, he assumed there would be a guard from the Order of the Phoenix. He sat down on the curb to watch and see if he could spot the guard that was bound to be there.   
  
Almost half an hour had passed and he hadn’t seen anything to show that there was a guard. He had thrown small stones to try and draw them out. He had looked for footprints in the yard that would show where an invisible person was standing. After that, he threw larger stones into the bushes and other likely hiding spots. Nothing.   
  
Draco allowed himself to laugh a little. Only the Order of the Phoenix would be incompetent enough to not have a guard placed on this person.   
  
He had been watching the windows of the house and it seemed like everyone was there: mother, father, daughter. They seemed very busy, running back and forth throughout the well-lit house.   
  
Draco stood and took off his Disillusionment charm. It was unnecessary at this point. It didn’t matter if they saw his glamoured face.   
  
He cast a variation of the silencing charm that worked on larger areas so that none of the surrounding Muggles would hear anything. He then walked up the pathway and cast a Reducto at the door. It was blown off its hinges and flew to the back of the room.   
  
The mother had walked behind it just then and was thrown back by the door. It seemed that she had died instantly when she impacted the wall. He could see her head lying at an unnatural angle underneath the door as he walked into the house.   
  
“What was that?” a girl called from the other room. She walked in quickly and stared at her mother uncomprehendingly. “Mom?” she turned her head and looked at the young man that stood in the doorway.   
  
“Hello, Hermione,” Draco said, smiling.   
  
“Who are you?” she asked, backing up through the door into the other room.  
  
“It doesn’t matter. The Dark Lord just wanted me to stop by and say hello.”  
  
Hermione turned her back and sprinted into the room she had come from and up the stairs. She felt a Reducto slam into the wall where she had been standing a second before.  
She heard the man make a noise of irritation and start following her. She ran down the hall upstairs and opened the door to her parents’ room.  
  
“Dad! You have to get out of here now! Death Eaters are here!”  
  
“Death Eaters? What about your mother?”  
  
“I don’t know; I’ll get to her. You have to get out of here now. I’ll meet you in the diner that we always go to.”   
  
“Hermione, this is what we were all trying to escape. I’m not going to leave you here to face this - we will do this together. I love you, and I love my wife.”   
  
Hermione stood staring at her father. Tears started rolling down her face. This had all been for nothing. Her mother was probably dead and they would be next. Her wand was in the other room, and she could hear the man’s footsteps at the top of the stairs.  
  
“Come on, Hermione. We have to live. We can’t give up now,” her dad rushed to the dresser and opened a drawer. Everything was almost packed, so the drawer was empty - but for one thing. Her father turned around, holding a little pistol.  
  
“Dad! Where did —”  
  
“Don’t ask now, come on. You said you had something that could get us to America?”  
  
“Yeah a Portkey. But it’s in my room.”  
  
“That’s fine.” He walked out into the hallway and shot.   
  
By some amazing feat of luck the bullet hit Draco’s wand, shattering the wood; the bullet ricocheted into the wall.   
  
Draco blinked. A Muggle had just stopped any chance he had of completing this mission. Voldemort would definitely kill him and his father for this. He started laughing.  
  
“What do you want with us?” Hermione’s father asked.   
  
“I was supposed to kill you,” Draco answered, still laughing.   
  
Hermione looked at him nervously - he was obviously insane. “What do we do now?” she asked her father.   
  
“Go get the Portkey. Then we’ll go down and get your mother.”   
  
Draco stood at the other end of the hallway trying to contain his burst of laughter. What to do now? He couldn’t finish this without his wand. Maybe he could come to some kind of deal.  
  
Hermione came back, holding a small pen that was obviously the Portkey.    
  
“Move downstairs slowly,” Mr. Granger told Draco.   
  
He complied and started walking down the stairs. As Hermione saw her mother, she ran to her, crying.   
  
Mr. Granger grabbed Draco by his neck and put the gun roughly against his head.   
  
“You killed her! You killed her!” he screamed at him.   
  
“Mr. Granger. I apologize for your loss. But you’re not a killer and neither is your daughter. I can see it in your eyes. You won’t kill me.”  
  
Mr. Granger continued to hold him for a second, then let him go and backed away. He felt awful. His wife was dead, and here he had the chance to avenge her, and he couldn’t do it. This young man looked like he was barely twenty.   
  
“What do you want from us?” Mr. Granger asked defeated, the sound of his daughter’s sobs had starting to calm.   
  
Draco paused in thought. Was there anything he could do to get out of this huge mess without getting killed? He couldn't go back to Voldemort without killing them. But that was out of the question with the gun pointed at him. They also couldn't just leave him for fear of him going back to Voldemort and all the Death Eaters coming after them. And there was no way Granger or her father could kill him. They just didn't have that ability. Maybe if he went for Granger herself her father shoot him but he couldn't just kill him outright.  
  
“It seems we've reached a bit of a stalemate. How about this? We can both go our separate ways if you’ll allow me to use your daughter’s wand to make it look like all three of you were killed here.”  
  
Hermione heard the request from the other room. She and her father could escape still. It meant that they could leave without much fear of Voldemort coming after them. This Death Eater, whoever he was, couldn't go and tell Voldemort that he had faked their death because he didn't have the ability to kill them. This could also just be some elaborate plot. It was a risk she would have to take. She stood up and went into the room. “Let him do it. It’s the only way we’ll be able to leave here safely.”  
  
Her father nodded to her in understanding and raised the gun level with the man again.   
  
“I will kill you if you try anything. Don’t think I won’t protect my daughter.”  
  
“Of course you will,” Draco responded dryly.   
  
Hermione came back with her wand and hesitantly gave it to him.   
  
He transfigured two bodies. They didn’t have much detail on them. They didn’t need to be. He was going to burn this whole place down after they left anyway.   
  
“Make a body for my wife, too. We’re taking her with us,” Mr. Granger said quietly.   
Draco nodded and transfigured a third body. Draco walked outside, the gun trained on his back the entire time. Hermione had moved the door and dragged her mother’s limp body outside with them.  
  
Draco didn’t show it, but he was furious. He was at the mercy of a Muggle and his Mudblood daughter. He couldn’t even use her wand against them. It wouldn’t work well for him and he was sure the man would shoot him if he even twitched the wand in the wrong direction.   
  
He also had no idea if he could lie to the Dark Lord. It meant death either way. He would be killed for failing or killed if he was caught lying. At least if he lied, though, there was a chance that he and his father would live. He’d had basic Occlumency training but he was no master. But maybe, just maybe, he could get away with it.  
  
“I’m going to light the house on fire,” he said so as not to set the man’s gun off when the house burst into flames. He cast a Dark spell that burned everything, even the ashes. There would be nothing left. Aiming the wand above the house he cast the Dark Mark. The skull shot out of his wand to float above him.   
  
He tossed the wand into the fire. The magical residue that would be left from the burned wand would be all the evidence the Aurors needed to prove the death of the family.   
  
Hermione cried out a little as she watched her wand arc through the air, landing in the fire. She fought with herself briefly to go run and get it. But she wouldn’t need the wand. Maybe, this way, they could completely escape this war. Her family would be thought dead, and they could start over. They wouldn’t stay in America, though. She was sure the man had heard where their Portkey was going and she couldn’t risk the Death Eaters following them. The only way they would know was if this man was unable to lie to Voldemort. It seemed to her that he was risking a lot, letting them leave like this.   
  
“Come on, Dad, let’s go.” She pulled the pen out of her pocket and held it out to her dad.   
  
Draco watched Hermione (still carrying her dead mother’s body) hold out the pen to her father. He almost felt sorry for Potter. This was one of his best friends, and it seemed like she was skipping out of town. Maybe she had meant to see him before she left, but somehow, he doubted it.   
  
Then the family disappeared with a soft pop. Draco looked back at the burning house, furious with how badly he had messed things up for himself. He had no wand. He hadn’t actually killed the Grangers. And now he had to lie to the most powerful man in Britain.   
  
“Damn,” Draco said, and disappeared with a crack.   



	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: I do not, am not trying to, and never will, own any part of the works of J.K. Rowling’s story, characters, or ideas.  
  
Chapter 5  
  
Mad-Eye and Kinglsey walked out of the front door of the Lovegood’s house. Luna’s father said he would rather go to Sweden for the summer than to Grimmauld Place. According to him, this was the perfect opportunity to search for bluzering howerts. Which, as he described, could only be found when someone was forced out of, what he or she considered to be, their home.   
  
Luna, though decided she would skip the trip to Sweden, despite it being a “wonderful opportunity” and insisted that there would be plenty of other times when she could go searching for bluzering howerts. And that, in any case, the pink tipped throppers were telling her to go to Grimmauld Place.   
  
Luna and her father then had a rather heated argument about what the pink tipped throppers were actually saying. It was eventually worked out. Mad-Eye left a portkey with Luna and instructions that it would activate after twenty-four hours but in case of an emergency saying, Phoenix, could activate it sooner.  
  
Mad-Eye shut the door behind them as they left the house.   
  
“You don’t think that Potter could have picked more normal friends. I’m gonna have a bloody headache dealing with that,” Mad-Eye grumbled.  
  
Kingsley chuckled a little. They crossed the ward boundary and apperated a block form where Hermione Granger lived. Coincidentally, they appeared in the same alley that Draco Malfoy had been in several hours earlier.   
  
“Mad-Eye,” Kingsley said. “Smell that?”   
  
“Smoke! Disillusion yourself,” Mad-Eye whispered.   
  
Disillusioned, they walked toward the end of the block and turned onto the street that the Grangers house was on.   
  
Aurors, in navy blue robes, were milling about taking statements from the neighbors. Once an auror moved on from a person they would be obliviated and sent home.  
  
Mad-Eye and Kinglsey walked closer, hoping to understand what was happening. It was at times like this that Mad-Eye really hated being a part of the Order. They were so restricted because of Fudges policies and both he and Kingsley would find themselves in a lot of trouble if they were discovered snooping around, invisible or not. Hopefully that would change soon. Between the break-in at the Department of Mysteries and Voldemort being seen in the Ministry Atrium there had been huge protests calling for Fudges resignation.   
  
They made there way closer to the house.   
  
“What do you think Mad-Eye?” Kingsley whispered.   
  
“It doesn’t look like anyone is alive does it? The house is burned to the ground… They might have taken the family to St. Mungos though,” Mad-Eye said.  
  
They continued walking through the crowd of aurors gleaning little bits of information here and there.  
  
“Well, there were no witnesses, sir,” one auror said to his superior. “The spell used on the house burned everything. There is sign of a fight though. We recorded several bursts of magic here on our sensors and the Department of Underage Magic shows that several dark curses were used by the girl’s wand.”  
  
“Are you saying that she was the one who attacked the house?” replied the senior auror.  
  
“It’s hard to say, sir. Our records give no motive for her being a Death Eater and this was her own house. It could have been an imperious curse though. We did find the residue of two wands in the fire suggesting that another wizard was here with her given her parents were both muggles.”   
  
“Let’s get out of here,” Mad-Eye whispered. “Meet you back at Headquarters.”   
  
***  
  
Ron sat in the living room at Grimmauld Place staring blankly at the wall. It had been several days since Mad-Eye and Kingsley had come back and broke the news that Hermione was dead. He just couldn’t believe it. Too much had happened too quickly.   
  
“Harry’s in a comma, Ginny dead and now Hermione too,” Ron thought. He sighed. He hated this. He didn’t even have time to mourn them between all the stuff he had to do now.   
  
His memories and feelings were beginning to meld with those of Jean-Paul Malfois. His family was noticing the change in him. Hell, even Dumbledore and some of the other Order members were noticing. It wasn’t bad, but it was difficult to deal with at times.   
  
He was quieter, which was to be expected given the loss of Ginny and Hermione. But there were other little things, things that caused him a large amount of embarrassment. His table manners had improved. He would instinctively grab the correct fork; eat slowly and in the proper order. It wasn’t just eating. His method of speech had been changing. He was beginning to sound more and more like a pompous aristocrat. The constant odd looks he was receiving were driving him insane.   
  
He dreamed of his former life. Just little bits of memories. It was like the highlights of Jean-Paul’s life and his mind was incorporating them into his own memory. It was so confusing and he would often mix his two lives up. Remembering something that happened in Jean-Paul’s childhood as if it happened in the backyard of the Burrow.  
  
“Ron, would you quit daydreaming and help us out here,” Neville said, looking back toward Tonks who was trying to get her Harry impersonation looking the right amount of tired.   
  
“I apologize, Neville. I was lost in thought.”   
  
Neville turned back around and stared at Ron confused, as did Tonks/Harry. It was at times like this that Ron disliked this melding of personalities. He blushed as his own personality fought with that of Jean-Paul about whether he should be embarrassed or not.    
  
After several seconds he got himself back under control. “Sorry,” he said sheepishly.  
  
Neville kept looking at him for a second and then turned back to Tonks.  
  
“What did you say was wrong again?” asked Tonks.   
  
“You don’t look tired enough,” Neville responded.   
  
“But I’m not tired.”  
  
“Right, but Harry is. Always. He always looks like he didn’t sleep the night before.”   
  
Luna interjected, “I wouldn’t necessarily say Harry is tired. It is more a look of world-weariness. You can tell because the wrackspurts always avoid him.”  
  
Tonks just stared at her wondering if she was going to keep talking about the wrackspurts.  
  
Ron piped up, “You need bags under your eyes Tonks, maybe that would do it.”  
  
Tonks added dark bags under her eyes. They looked at her. On the surface she looked tired. But she didn’t look like Harry. She looked like ‘I drank too much coffee last night at dinner’ tired. Harry usually looked like ‘I haven’t slept in two years because of nightmares that leave me screaming for hours every night.’   
  
“It’s fine for now. Let’s keep going,” Neville said, sounding unconvinced. “Just walk back and forth for a little bit.”  
  
Luna sat in the corner humming to her self while Neville walked back to where Ron was sitting. “This isn’t going to work, Ron. Look at her. It’s Harry’s body but it doesn’t look anything like him. Harry’s more… more —”   
  
“Dangerous,” Ron interrupted. “Like he could beat you into a pulp if you messed with him.”   
  
Neville looked a little embarrassed. “Well, erm… yeah.”  
  
Tonks stopped walking and looked at them. “What are you two going on about over there?”  
  
Ron stood up, “Tonks, this isn’t working you don’t look anything like Harry.”   
  
“What do you mean?” Tonks said more than a little irritated. “I look exactly like him.”  
  
“Tonks,” Ron interrupted exasperated, “Just looking like the person isn’t the same as actually acting and being that person. Harry isn’t a normal kid. Harry walks like he could be attacked at any minute. He draws his wand at the slightest provocation.”   
  
“Loud noises, if someone doesn’t announce themselves, if someone almost runs into him, he’ll pull his wand,” Neville added.   
  
“Exactly,” Ron agreed. “You need to walk around for the next couple days in Harry’s body and try to be him. These little hour-long sessions aren’t going to work.”  
  
“Oh really, and how am I supposed to pretend to be him then if I’m doing everything wrong?” Tonks said indignantly.  
  
Neville and Ron traded a glance, Neville started. “Pretend you’re on a mission for the Aurors. You’re meeting a contact at Florean Fortiscues but you don’t know who it is. Every person could be a Death Eater, even people you recognize.”  
  
Tonks stared at them dumbfounded. “You’re not serious? Harry can’t be like that all the time.”  
  
Ron shrugged. “Every Defense against the Dark Arts professor expect for Lupin has tried to kill him. We assumed Snape was a Death Eater practically the very first week of school. He’s been attacked multiple times every year by people he was told, or thought, he could trust,” Ron said.  
  
“Harry doesn’t joke. He doesn’t laugh. He walks around like he’s ready to attack or be attacked. The students look up to him, but are scared of him. There are so many rumors about him,” Neville continued.  
  
“Many of which, are true,” Ron said, moving with Neville’s thought.   
  
This time it was Neville’s turn to look at him dumbfounded. “They are?”   
  
“Yup. Well almost all of them. I’m pretty sure that the one about him sleeping with snakes isn’t true. Same with the one about him having a suit of armor that he’s enchanting to be indestructible so he can kill the Dark Lord and replace him.”   
  
“Umm… Ron, what rumors are true then?” asked Tonks.   
  
Neville too looked curious.  
  
“Well, the rumors are pretty much just about what we’ve done each year. First year we saved the Philosophers stone from Voldemort. We had to go through all the traps that the teachers had placed. Harry ended up killing Quirell who was possessed by Voldemort. Second year he found out he was a parslemouth and could hear a basilisk that was using the school’s pipes to try and kill students. Hermione figured out where the Chamber of Secrets was and we went down to rescue Gi- the girl who was brought down there. Who was again possessed by Voldemort but this time through his diary that he wrote during school,” Ron paused thinking about all their adventures. “That was also when Lockhart ended up at St. Mungo’s. He tried to obliviate us so he could take credit for finding the Chamber but it backfired and hit him.”  
  
Tonks stared at him. Her jaw had dropped about halfway through Ron’s speech. “That all happened in your first and second year?”   
  
“Wellll,” Ron said thinking, “yeah, pretty much, there was some other stuff. We fought a troll. Harry found Voldemort in the Forbidden forest drinking unicorn blood. We also went out to follow the spiders to try and figure out what Slytherin’s beast was. That was the worst in my mind. Bloody spiders. We ended up deep in the forbidden forest in an acromantula lair. We were only saved because the… erm… spider king was a raised by Hagrid, which gave us time to be rescued by my dad’s enchanted car that lives in the Forbidden Forest. I wonder how it’s doing now? I could have sworn I saw it flying above the forest last year when I looked out my dormitory window.”  
  
Tonks and Neville just stared at Ron, shocked, horrified, impressed, neither was really sure how they should be feeling. Ron was still muttering to himself about spiders and ‘that bloody flying car’. Neville was a little less surprised than Tonks. He knew they’d gotten into stuff they shouldn’t have over the years. He just didn’t know quite the extent of how much trouble.  
  
Tonks on the other hand was beyond shock. An eleven year old had to do all that! It had to be slightly exaggerated. Didn’t it?  
  
Dumbledore walked in at that moment. “Perhaps it would help you understand if I could provide a pensive to help you see Harry.”  
  
Ron was startled out of his thoughts. “A pensive?” Ron thought about it. “That could actually be exactly what we need.”  
  
“I thought so. I have it in the kitchen.”   
  
They made there way into the kitchen. Several Order members were in there sitting around.   
  
Mad-Eye glanced up from his conversation with Kingsley. “How’s it going Tonks, you think you’ll be able to pretend to be the boy?”   
  
Ron spoke up before Tonks could say anything. “We’re not even close yet. But we’ll get there.”  
  
Tonks glared at Ron as he walked over and started pulling memories from his mind. He didn’t have that many. He never made it all the way during the many adventures with Harry. He chose several fights Harry got into with Malfoy, him walking around when he was in a bad mood, also a memory of when Harry pulled his wand and stupefied him when he touched his shoulder once.   
  
Neville stepped forward and put a couple memories in as well. Dumbledore also offered several.   
  
After he had placed them in the silver bowl he looked around the kitchen. “I think it would be useful if Alastor and Kingsley viewed them along with Tonks and I.”  
  
They nodded and stepped forward. Dumbledore enlarged the bowl so they could all look in. As they all entered the memories Ron looked over at Neville smirking. “This should be funny.”  
  
Harry could be downright scary when he wanted to be. He wasn’t even sixteen and he still had bursts of accidental magic when he got mad.   
  
***  
  
Harry sighed as he closed the last book and placed it on a shelf he had conjured. He looked at the two empty shelves that Voldemort had brought into his mind and vanished them with a wave of his wand.   
  
Voldemort basically gave him all the knowledge he acquired during his Hogwarts years. Which is to say, was much, much more than the average seventh year. Harry settled back into the armchair and released the grip he held on his mind coming back to reality.  
  
Harry felt his body awaken. He slowly opened his eyes.  
  
Black  
  
Harry started struggling in his bed opening his eyes as wide as he could force them trying to see something. His heart started pounding harder as he realized he still couldn’t see anything. He was sweating from exertion and his legs seized up. He cried out in pain.   
  
A hand forced him back against the bed. He could tell they were calling to him. Saying something. But he couldn’t tell what. A cup was brought to his mouth and tipped back. The disgusting taste that had just flooded his mouth made him choke as he inadvertently swallowed it.   
  
He instantly relaxed.  
  
“Potter?” a voice said quietly, a little out of breath. “Potter you’re alright now, okay? I had to give you a calming drought to keep you from hurting yourself.”  
  
“I can’t see,” Harry said calmly. He hated calming potions. He hated calming potions! As he thought about how much he hated them his magic responded and rose up inside of him. He felt it pulse through his whole body. A second later it was gone.   
  
“But,” he noticed, “so are the effects of the calming potion,” He smiled to himself.  
  
Madame Pomfrey looked down at him nervously. He had mentioned his eyes when… well she wasn’t really sure what happened. Everything went blurry for a second and she could feel his magic flowing from him like a dam had broke.   
  
She looked down at him as he smiled slightly. She cast a quick diagnostic charm and began talking.   
  
“Mr. Potter, I hate to have to tell you this, but your eyes were permanently damaged during your confrontation with you-know-who.”  
  
Harry’s mind reeled. “My eyes!” he thought. “The only thing I had left of my mom.” Harry lay on the bed in silence as he tried to comprehend what had happened to him. The fact that they reminded him of his mom was one thing. But he couldn’t see now. How was he supposed to fight the Dark Lord? Make him pity him to death. Harry snorted no. He needed his sight back. An idea occurred to him there were many rituals that Tom was researching at Hogwarts. Tom looked over most of them but there had been a branch of rituals that could enhance the body. He’d have to look… no that wouldn’t work. He couldn’t see and the Order sure as hell wasn’t going to let him start blindly experimenting with rituals. He’d just have to hope the Dumbledore had something that could help him.   
  
***  
  
AN: Well it’s a little short and I really hated writing this chapter. HATED. Hit a writer’s block and then I discovered I despise having to write this kind of setup junk. But it must be done. Hopefully the next chapter will have more action. Thanks for reading yall.   
  
  
  



	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: I don’t own Harry Potter. Yup I said it. . .  
  
Chapter 6  
  
  
“What do you think?”   
  
“Well, he needs help, obviously. Dumbledore seems totally lost. He tried searching for the guy who made Moody’s eye but he died a couple years back apparently.”  
  
“You’d think Dumbledore being all powerful and all could just do something himself.”  
  
“Hmmmm. Well, either way, we need to see if there is something we can do. We’re all he’s got it seems. Dumbledore is doing his own thing and making sure nobody can see him. He even sent Professor Lupin away when he pitched a fit about not being able to see Harry. Or at least, that’s what I heard. He’s off on some ‘vital’ mission that only he can do.”  
  
“Seems pretty convenient.”   
  
“I believe the flilly’s have forced our hand. We are left with only one option, and that is to help him. I can tell because they are starting to move closer to him.”  
  
“…”  
  
“Yeah…”  
  
“She’s right though. It’s been a week and nobody seems like they can do anything.”  
  
“So how can we?”  
  
“Just get in there. We need to talk to him now while everyone else is busy.”  
  
Harry heard the door open gently. The soft foot falls of two people, and one who just walked normally, broke through his thoughts about what he had just heard.  
  
“Luna!” Ron said exasperated, “could you at least try to be quiet?”  
  
“Why? We don’t need to be. If you paid more attention in school Ronald you would know that flillys eat sound waves.”  
  
“Oi! What class did they teach that in?”  
  
Luna seemed not to hear him and looked at Harry as he started laughing gently. They all looked at him.  
  
“Hey mate, you alright?”  
  
Harry continued laughing slightly. “Ron I have been trapped in this room with only Madame Pomfrey for company for the last week. And all she does is poke me with her wand and sigh sadly.”   
  
“Right.”   
  
A long silence fell. Ron and Neville stood staring awkwardly at Harry. They weren’t really sure what to say. What could they do for him that Dumbledore couldn’t?  
  
“Can everyone still hear okay?” Luna asked dreamily.   
  
This sent Harry into another fit of laughing.   
  
As he calmed down he looked at Ron and Neville.  
  
“So why are you up here when you’re clearly not allowed?”   
  
Ron and Neville looked back at Harry’s unseeing eyes. Harry had gone from snickering softly at Luna’s oddities to looking almost emotionless.   
  
Unnerved, Neville started hesitantly. “We came… I… Well, we came to see if we could do anything to help you. There isn’t anybody here who seems to be on your side. We have to teach Tonks how to be your double so people will still see ‘you’ at school, if you don’t return... Dumbledore doesn’t even seem like he’s able to do anything to… uhh…” at this point Neville seemed to lose some of the momentum he had built up during his speech.   
  
“To fix your lack of sight,” Ron put in helpfully.   
  
“My lack of sight? That’s strangely tactful of you,” Ron flushed slightly. There was a pause and Harry seemed to be thinking. He ran a hand through his hair. “Yes. This will work,” Harry said to himself. “Go to the library upstairs. Find the section on rituals. If you can’t find any you might need to ask an order member — discretely of course — what they did with all of the darker books. When, and if, you find the books search for any ritual that has to do with eye’s or sight. I trust the three of you to know if you find something.”  
  
“What if the books aren’t in the house?” asked Ron.  
  
“They will be.”  
  
Ron looked at him a little skeptically.   
  
“Rituals!?” Neville said, finally working up the courage to speak. “But that’s da —”  
  
“We’ll find them Harry,” Ron said.   
  
He turned and walked out of the room with Luna following after him. He grabbed Neville by the elbow on his way out.   
  
“Come on Neville. You heard him. We have to go to the library.”  
  
Harry lay on his bed. Staring into the void that was his vision. He smiled a little. Yes, this should work. If Tom’s memories were correct then the books had ancient familial wards preventing them from being taken out of the house or damaged in any way so they had to be in the house somewhere. He hoped they were in the library. It would be much simpler if they were.   
  
“I wonder where Hermione is?” Harry thought to himself.   
  
***  
  
Draco appeared at the apparation point in the Dark Lords fortress. He was shaking.   
  
“I can’t do this. This is the end. Lie to the Dark Lord? Runaway? Stupid bloody muggle!” he thought to himself.   
  
The guards looked at him a little nervously as Draco’s magic flared with his anger. He stormed out of the room.  
  
He could feel his magic calling for his destroyed wand. The longer it called the angrier and more chaotic his magic became. He turned and threw his fist into the wall next to him. The stone wall cracked from floor to ceiling unfortunately his hand broke as well.   
  
“Draco! Calm yourself!” Lucius snarled at him. “You’re going to get yourself killed. The Dark Lord will kill you for having such a tantrum.”  
  
In truth, Lucius knew other wise. The Dark Lord would be thrilled to see Draco exhibit this display of power and would likely push him through the ranks faster. He couldn’t allow that. As Draco’s father it was his duty to at least try and protect him. Family comes first with the Malfoy’s and he wanted to keep Draco as far from the Death Eaters and his master as he could.   
  
It seemed like sort of a lost cause. There wasn’t anything he could actually do.  
  
He looked at his son who had calmed himself. Or at least, had forced the appearance of calm onto his face. His breathing was still a little erratic but even as he watched that slowly took on a normal pattern as well. He held his wand hand a little oddly, like it was injured.  
  
“Draco, what happened?”  
  
Draco looked up into his father’s eyes. For a split second he debated telling his father everything and allowing him to guide him in solving this mess.   
  
“I killed them. Mother, father and daughter. I killed her parents in front of her. But, when I killed her, there was a burst of some force, maybe accidental magic, and it shattered my wand as well as my hand.”  
  
Lucius eyed his son. It wasn’t the full story, but it was close enough to the truth to not warrant any more curiosity on his part.   
  
He leaned into Draco and said softly, “you better lie better than that when you are in front of the Dark Lord.” He then turned and started walking toward his master’s chamber.   
  
Draco simply nodded at his fathers back and followed him through the dark stone corridors.   
  
***  
  
“Aah. The Malfoy’s have returned to usss. Draco, did you complete your task?”  
  
Draco walked forward slowly and kneeled in front of the serpentine figure.   
  
“Yes my lord.”  
  
He hoped that the Dark Lord wouldn’t ask for too much detail.  
  
“Annd? What happened my little Draconusss? I can taste your pain.”  
  
“My lord, there was no guard. I walked in and killed the family. But the mudblood, in a fit of accidental magic, shattered my wand and my hand as she died.”   
  
The other death eaters standing in the room shuffled a little in the silence that followed his explanation.   
  
“Draco,” said the Dark Lord, “I felt a burst of magic earlier.”  
  
Lucius’s heart skipped a beat.  
  
“I’m sorry my lord I was upset with myself. It won’t happen again.”  
  
Draco saw, in his periphery, the Dark Lords eyebrow rise slightly. “Draco go down to the three floors and ask for Faruk Coskun. He will make you a new wand.”  
  
“Thank you my lord,” Draco said. He stood to leave but the Dark Lord called him again.   
  
“Draco, come to me.”   
  
Draco nervously at first but he quickly hid it and walked to the Dark Lord’s side.   
  
“Give me your arm Draco Malfoy.”   
  
Draco’s heart started pounding he was going to be marked now! That never happened. He held out his arm. He almost rolled up his sleeve but he didn’t want to seem presumptive.  
  
The Dark Lord flicked his wand and his sleeve vanished. The point of his wand quickly to touch the skin of his forearm. There were no speeches or words of congratulations, just the incantation.   
  
“Morsmodre,” the Dark Lord hissed softly.   
  
The spot on Draco’s arm burned slightly. It wasn’t as painful as he had expected though. It felt like a knife going into him but nothing even close to the cruciatus curse. The pain stopped and all that was left was a dull throb.   
  
Draco looked down at it. “Thank you my lord. It is an honor.”   
  
“You may go Draco.”  
  
Draco bowed again and left the room. Lucius hurried to follow him.  
  
“Luciuss.”   
  
He stopped slowly and turned around lowering is eyes. “Yes master?”  
  
Voldemort sat at the head of the room staring at him. His red eyes coldly evaluating him as he stood there. His long spider-like fingers curled over the arms of his chair.  
  
“Do not try and keep your son from me. He iss mine, as you are yourself,” his voice was high and menacing.   
  
“Yes, my lord.”  
  
“Crucio!”   
  
Lucius Malfoy fell to his knees in pain. His jaw clenched as he fought against the curse. But his body eventually gave in and he screamed in pain.   
  
Voldemort lifted the curse just after he saw his follower break under it.   
  
“Go meet your son, Luciuss.”   
  
Draco, stood outside the throne room shaking with adrenalin. He had just lied to the Dark Lord and gotten away with it! He wasn’t punished for losing his wand to a muggle. He’d never felt more powerful in his life. His good hand clenched into a fist. He would be powerful. He would be the Dark Lord’s favored.   
  
“Draco,” his father said, interrupting his thoughts, “come, I will show you where Coskun’s room is.”  
  
He started to walk away.   
  
“No.” Draco’s voice echoed off the stone in the corridor. The magic laced in the word forced his father to stop.   
  
“Draco, now is not the time to have delusions of grandeur.” He looked into his son’s eyes and saw the power in them. It was something, he realized, he had never noticed before.   
  
“No, father. I’m done following behind you like a lost child. There are powers and factors in this world that no one has seen yet but me.”  
  
“Draco,” his father said placidly. “You cannot start this now. You are a child. There are powers in this world, and they are all much smarter and more powerful than you.”  
  
“Do not underestimate me father. Potter will be a player in this war. Nobody has seen it yet. He could easily fall to the dark. But he will not be Dumbledore’s pawn. The Dark Lord hasn’t seen it. Neither has Dumbledore. I will either fight Potter or I sill stand at his side. You know how magic works. We are drawn to support the most powerful wizards. It is in the nature of our magic that we defer to those people. The Dark Lord’s days are numbered as are Dumbledore’s,” Draco whispered furiously.   
  
Lucius eyed him. Maybe his son was right. Potter though, he was hardly a power. Meek, not particularly talented or smart, he would never match the Dark Lord or Dumbledore. His curiosity and irritation with his son turned to sadness. He would not be able to save him. Draco would obsess and devote his life to something that would get him killed whether it was with the Dark Lord or Potter, as he claimed. It didn’t matter… he couldn’t protect him any longer.   
  
“Faruk, is down the hall three floors down. The stairway is on your left. I will see you at dinner, Draco.”   
  
Draco, walked past his father without acknowledging him. Lucius, didn’t turn to watch his son walk away from him. He stood where he was, looking at where he had been standing a few seconds before.   
  
There was nothing he could do for him now. He understood his son’s actions. He was young and ambitious. He had chosen a harder route and as the head of the Malfoy family he should be proud that the last scion chose to make a name for him self. But it was out of his hands now. He began walking toward the apparation chamber. As he did he couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that this could be the end of the Malfoy line.   
  
***  
Remus sat freezing in the cold forest. He had been walking for days since he left a small village north of Nice. He was sent to meet with the alpha of a very influential pack.  
  
Werewolves were notoriously unstructured. Their government, if it could be called that, was based off of the strength of the alpha of each pack. The rest of the pack followed their alpha. This was all well and good but the alpha could be challenged at any time. And a pack that is led by a wolf that isn’t vastly superior to all the other wolves in his pack would run into problems. Years of challenges to the leader could destroy a pack.   
  
It made any sort of central ruling body among the werewolf race next to impossible. All magical species deferred to power. Whether they were vampires, wizards, veela, or werewolves.   
  
The werewolves just had it the hardest due to that pack mentality. The veela were also similar. Wizards would be the same if it weren’t for human’s general aversion to murder and violence. Not to say that humans are a peaceful race. But there has to be a reason for their violence in order for the human psyche to justify it. The reasoning could be as misguided and immoral as they come but as long as there is a reason humans can kill.   
  
Vampires, despite the stereotypes, were probably the most civil of all the species. It is because they don’t see the other species as threats or equals or barbaric. Vampires see all other races simply as food. Their courts are based on power. Vampiric power comes from age. No young vampire could ever hope to challenge an older vampire. The oldest vampires have ruled for thousands of years. And thus they have a very stable society. The ruling class will always be the ruling class. The only chance for a young vampire to seize power is if they can sruvive for a very, very long time.   
  
Wizards and Muggles see vampires as being dangerous barbaric creatures. It’s not that they are dead that drives a humans hatred and fear of them. It’s that they drink blood. The idea of drinking the fluid that drives their existence terrifies humans. It is so completely repulsive that they have an innate fear and hatred of them.  
  
Werewolves also hate Vampires out of reflex. It is not out of fear though. It is out of disgust of the undead. Werewolves, by nature, are in-tune with the earth. In fact many alphas have some druidic ability and the more powerful stable packs have a number of druids in them. Druidic magic is based on nature. It was banned by many wizarding ministries because of the use of blood to power druidic rituals.  
  
Werewolves are of earth. Vampires exist outside of nature. They are almost polar opposites.  
  
“Anyone could have done this. It might have even been better if someone else had,” Remus thought to himself. “Damn you Albus, I want to be with the last of my pack right now, not out here trying to hold high level talks with a race that has no use for them.”   
  
Remus was alpha material, so to speak. The only reason he had survived in the wizarding world was because he dressed down and wore glamours to make his appearance more frail and ragged. He couldn’t look like he posed any kind of threat to ‘normal’ wizarding society or the ministry would have dragged him to Azkaban. Those glamours were not cast now.   
  
Being a werewolf had gifted him with a body that was almost solid muscle. He was not bulky by any means. But you could see the muscles ripple beneath his skin every time he moved.  
  
Despite his dangerous appearance, his personality was no different than it had ever been. He was a mild man. A scholarly type. It was why he had left the werewolves. He would never have survived, ironically, because of his alpha build. It would have made him a threat to the alpha in any pack he was in. And though he could probably win in any fight he got into his personality would not enable him lead the pack. He was a follower in an alpha’s body i.e. an outcast. Unable to join a pack and unable to lead.   
  
And so in the summer between his second and third year of Hogwarts he left and, with the help of Dumbldore, integrated himself completely into wizarding society.   
  
A tall man stepped out from behind a tree. His hair was wild and flew out in every direction.  He was the alpha of his pack. His body was built very similarly to Remus’s and you could feel the strength and ferocity that seemed to be barely restrained in the man’s body.  
  
“You are Remus. There are many stories about you,” he paused. “I don’t listen to stories. Some make you out to be the hero of the werewolves. Fighting for our rights so we don’t have to hide from the world out of fear that our children might be killed by hunters. Others call you a traitor to our kind. Living in the lap of a powerful wizard doing his will.”   
  
“I am both and I am neither. I am unable to fight for our kind as much as I would like. But the wizard protects me from the other humans. He also tries to fights the anti-werewolf laws where I cannot. In payment I work for him.”  
  
The alpha nodded understanding. “What have you come to ask of my pack?” he asked.  
  
“I was told to ask for your support. I will not. I ask for your neutrality. Neither side will give you what you want. The light will forget your contribution to the war once it is won and the dark will never give you what we want.”  
  
“You are sure that our neutrality is best?” asked the alpha. In this matter he would defer to this strange wolf’s judgment.  
  
“Yes, I am sure. If anything ever changes I will come to you the night before the full moon at this same spot.”   
  
The alpha nodded and disappeared back into the forest.   
  
Remus sighed. That went better than he had planned. He was lucky that the alpha of this pack was reasonable. It could have been very bad for him or for the alpha had things been different. Hopefully news would spread of this packs neutrality and others would follow.   
  
He turned and went the opposite direction into the forest and began the long walk back to civilization.   
  
***  
  
“Dammit!” Ron slid his arm violently across the table causing all the books he had on it to crash to the ground.  
  
It had been several days since Harry had asked them to find a ritual for him that would fix his eyes. They had found the books in the back corner of the library. But so far they hadn’t found anything that would repair his eyes.   
  
They had found one that got rid of your eyes so you could have a seer’s sight. And one that made your eyes look like a cats. One very odd one made your eyes twinkle.   
  
Ron and Neville decided maybe they would keep that to themselves. It wouldn’t do any good for people to know that the “Leader of the Light” had experimented with rituals. But also, the fact that he did a ritual to make his eyes twinkle… well, that was more than a little weird and it made both of them snicker a little uncomfortably thinking about it.   
  
They had decided the best way to search through the books was to do it alone. And have the other two standing watch around the house in case anyone was looking for the person who was in the library, anyone started to go to the library, or if Mad-Eye Moody walked in the door to Grimmauld Place.   
  
Ron sighed and put his head in his hands. This was never going to work. He hadn’t found a single ritual that would help Harry in the way he wanted. He had however found several rituals that increased stamina, speed, and fitness. He’d marked all these and set them aside to show Harry.   
  
He hadn’t mentioned them to Neville and didn’t think he ever would. Neville was still having a hard time looking through the dark books even though they were trying to find something to help Harry.   
  
Ron had sort of hoped that Neville would eventually come into his own. Especially the last couple weeks it seemed like Neville was going to break through some invisible wall. It hadn’t happened yet, and it seemed like Neville would never lose the bumbling shyness he had developed because of his upbringing.   
  
Ron bent over and started picking up the books he had knocked off. He was starting to regret his outburst because he had lost his place in the eight different books he had been flipping through.   
  
“Ron?” asked Remus Lupins baritone voice.   
  
Ron jerked, dropped the two books he had just picked up and slammed his head into the bottom of the table.  
  
“Dammit Remus! Don’t sneak up on people like that.”   
  
Ron started backtracking. “I mean Lupin, I mean Professor Lupin… sorry.” Again Ron flushed a little and angrily started muttering about “that bloody brain.”   
  
Remus smiled slightly. “Remus would be fine. I haven’t been your Professor in years.”  
  
Ron stood gently, one hand on the top of his head feeling the lump that was starting to form and the other placing several of the books back on the table.   
  
Ron looked toward Remus who just raised his eyebrow and gave a pointed look at the books Ron had just put on the table.   
  
“Err, yeeaah. It’s for school….” Remus’s other eyebrow went up and his mouth twitched a little.   
  
“Okay, it’s not. It’s for Harry.”   
  
Ron made a brief leap of faith hoping that Remus was more Harry’s man than he was Dumbledore’s.   
  
“Want to help?”  
  
Remus silently pulled a chair over, grabbed a book, sat down and started turning pages. Ron grinned and went back to trying to find where he had been before.   
  
***  
  
Let me know what you think. Do you like where the story is going? review review


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